â Whatâs there for me? Another dreadful job? More pathetic suitors looking to corner me into kids and a kitchen? â Iâm there.

Janaina Medeiros

â

ellievsbear

Alisa U Zemlji Chuda
Jules of Nature
Sweet Seals For You, Always
"I'm Dorothy Gale from Kansas"
almost home
styofa doing anything
đŞź

pixel skylines

Product Placement

if i look back, i am lost
tumblr dot com
i don't do bad sauce passes

#extradirty
Stranger Things
seen from Sweden

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seen from T1

seen from United States

seen from Germany

seen from Malaysia
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@aubrys
â Whatâs there for me? Another dreadful job? More pathetic suitors looking to corner me into kids and a kitchen? â Iâm there.

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Say. What if I try out this show with a sensibly-dressed middle-aged scotswoman in it? I bet I'll end up invested a completely normal amount.
Kind of obsessed with Ramdhaâs pixmit deck so I decided to mock up a (wonky) set of my own in order to try to make sense of them.Â
The cards we see on screen all have three doorways that are either closed, open to the left, or open to the right. Which means that when you fit them together different paths open up through the spread. Sometimes you can step from one card to the next. Sometimes you have to skirt around through another card. Some cards end up blocked off entirely. Itâs clever and super, super Romulan.
Lucy Smith and Pauline Ranken of the Ladies' Scottish Climbing Club climbing the Salisbury Crags in 1908.

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âWTF JLP WhatsApp Groupâ - for @little-brisk
âwtf jlp whatsapp groupâ Š @aubrys 2020
Picard undercover on Freecloud, S01E05Â âStardust City Ragâ
Picard:Â Well, how about this? The daughter of the man whose death I have been mourning for two decades comes to me for help and assistance. And then she is assassinated in front of my eyes by a Romulan death squad who will then go and try and find and destroy her twin sister!! Picard (simplified translation): Iâm doing it for the Lals.
So I read the first of the Picard comics and the important thing is that there is no information about Beverly Crusher and my anxiety continues apace.Â
Inktober #22: Selkie

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Dungeon crawling or lucid dreaming?
Iâve done several experiments with a text-generating neural network called GPT-2. Trained at great expense by OpenAI (to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars worth of computing power), GPT-2 learned to imitate all kinds of text from the internet. Iâve interacted with the basic model, discovering its abilities to generate fan fiction, British snacks, or tea. Iâve also used a tool called gpt-2-simple that Max Woolf developed to make it easy to finetune GPT-2 on more specialized datasets - Iâve tried it on datasets like recipes or crochet. One of my favorite applications of GPT-2 and other text-generating neural nets is Dungeons and Dragons spells, creatures, character names, and character bios.
Recently Max published a tutorial on how to use GPT-2 to make new apps that are more complicated than just printing out large reams of text. To my delight, people have used them to made D&D games. First, there was Nick Waltonâs AI Dungeon, in which a finetuned GPT-2 generates a story and three very strange action options at each step.
My latest obsession is GPT-2 Adventure, designed by a cognitive neuroscience student named Nathan, which lets you type in your own actions. And folks, this game is SO WEIRD and SO FUN.
YOU FLOAT IN SPACE, LIKE A BALLOON, AND AS YOU DROP THE CUBE, THE X, IT VANISHES IN A CLOUD OF GREASY BLACK SMOKE
>>
When I first launch the game, this is what Iâm greeted with, a simple text prompt reminiscent of nostalgic dungeon crawling games. It sets the scene. It waits for me to describe my next move.
Even getting to this point is like a blast from the past. The game runs in a Google Colab notebook, a format where youâre looking at cells of code, with cryptic comments, vaguely alarming warning messages, and all. Itâs not a sleek web app, but feels more akin to playing a game on an old DOS machine, or maybe on a graphing calculator. There are only two clicks to begin playing, but thereâs a good two-minute wait while the game loads.
And itâs my turn to type something.
>> look up
It takes several seconds for the game to respond, as if Iâm playing it on a very ancient computer. The computer is in fact a state-of-the-art NVIDIA GPU, likely a K80 or a T4. The T4 could eat my laptop for lunch. Iâm just playing with a very very large neural net. Finally it answers.
YOUâRE IN LABYRINTH OF TWISTY LITTLE PASSAGES, ALL ALIKE
Almost immediately, the context seems to have changed. Iâm not floating at all. Iâm in a maze. I guess Iâll walk somewhere.
>> walk north
THE TROLL STEPS OUT FROM BENEATH THE BRIDGE AND BLOCKS YOUR WAY
YOU ARE ON THE SOUTH SIDE OF THE CHASM
A NOD IS GIVEN TO THE INFINITE WONDER THAT IS URBZIG
A SOLID RAINBOW SPANS THE CHASM
And suddenly things are happening. There is a troll. There is a chasm. There is a rainbow. There is⌠Urbzig? I play it safe.
>> praise urbzig
URBZIG IS THE PATRON SAINT OF ZORK
HE IS THE GODFATHER OF ZORK, THE PLACE TO GET NEWS OF EPIC PROPORTIONS
URBZIG IS A STRONGMAN,é ALL
If youâve played classic dungeon crawling games like Zork, you may recognize some of these names and phrases. Checking Nathanâs original post, I see that the training data is indeed drawn from these games. But because itâs based on GPT-2, the training data also in some sense also includes much of the internet. This gives it a lot of latent flexibility to deal with situations that were never in the classic games.
>> ask Harry Potter to try walking across the rainbow
ASK HARRY POTTER TO TRY WALKING ACROSS THE RAINBOW HE CANâT THE RAINBOW IS EXTREMELY WIDE ABOVE YOU IS A LARGE DOME UP AROUND ITS NECK IS A STRONGG PORE [UNFORTUNATELY, THE DIRECTION OF TRAVEL IS A LOT MORE INTERESTING THAN YOU THINK ][YOU ARE IN A LARGE ROOM, WITH A PASSAGE TO THE EAST, A PASSAGE TO THE WEST, AND A WALL OF BROKEN ROCK TO THE SOUTH
An interesting effect of its human-written training data is that, like Visual Chatbot, it isnât prepared for humans that ask questions about objects that arenât there. If I refer to Harry Potter, then Harry Potter must be present. If I type something about a giraffe, then it assumes the giraffe must be present.
>> ask the giraffe which direction to go next
THE GIRAFFE IS ALREADY OUTFITTED WITH A VISOR WHICH IS CLEARLY DEFINED
Although itâs not clear that this AI actually understands what a giraffe is.
>> look at the giraffes
THE GAZEBO HAS DISAPPEARED
>> put giraffe in backpack
DONE
Navigating this world is like navigating in a dream. My location suddenly changes without warning. I thought I was by a chasm with a rainbow bridge. Now apparently Iâm in a building. Dreamlike, it is also really hard to read text.
>> look around
YOU ARE IN A LARGE ROOM, WITH A PASSAGE TO THE SOUTH, A PASSAGE TO THE EAST, AND A WALL OF BROKEN ROCK TO THE NORTH A SIGN POSTED ABOVE THE NORTH WALL READS, âSTOP! PAY TROLL!â A SMALL WINDOW CAN BE SEEN IN EITHER WALL
>> read sign
THE SIGN IS VERY SIMPLE
>> yes but read sign
WE NOW HAVE ALL FIFTEEN TREASURES IT IS TIME TO GO BACK INTO THE CAVE FOR THE END GAME
>> thatâs awesome. but i still want to know what the sign says. read sign.
YOU ARE IN A GAZEBO ROOM WHICH HAS DOORS ONLY TO THE EAST AND SOUTH
Another thing thatâs surprisingly difficult to do is check inventory.
>> check inventory
DONE
>> check inventory
THERE IS AN INTERESTING LOOT HERE
>> what is the loot
WHAT IS THE LOOT?
>> check inventory
YOU ARE IN THE BAG CASE
Very occasionally I will succeed in opening a bag. It will usually be weird.
>> open bag
OPENING THE BAG REVEALS A TEA BAG
>> make tea
AY! A LOVELY SURPRISE FOR THE SURPRISE
More so than any other game Iâve played, Iâm unsure of the rules here. Some weird things unexpectedly work.
IF YOU DONâT GET KILLED, YOU ARE TOAST
>> Eat the toast.
EAT THE TOAST IT TASTES LIKE A STEAK A STEAK IS PERFECTLY FINE
Other seemingly obvious things donât work.
THERE IS A PATH TO THE NORTH, A PATH TO THE SOUTH, OR A STEEP PATHWAY CLIMBING SOUTHWEST ALONG THE EDGE OF A CHASM
>> go north
I DONâT KNOW HOW TO DO THAT
>> go south
I DONâT KNOW HOW TO DO THAT
>> go southwest
YOU WILL BE DESCENDING INTO A VALLEY THERE IS A NARROW BEACH TO THE NORTH AND A PATH LEADING INTO A CANYON TO THE SOUTHEAST YOU ARE ON THE CLIFF OVERLOOKING THE FAR SIDE OF THE ROOM A PATH LEADS SOUTH ALONG THE EDGE OF A CHASM, AND A NARROW PATH LEADING INTO A LOZENGE ROOM
Sometimes Iâm wandering endlessly from room to room, from cave to cave, encountering the same chasm in slightly different variations, the same dried-up lake. Other times Iâm embroiled in seemingly unescapable fights, usually with trolls. Often reality shifts entirely around me and I end up in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike, or in the hall of the mountain king. Everything seems weirdly familiar - even the room descriptions are echoes of classic dungeon crawling games. It is as if Iâm dreaming about playing them again.
My actions also mold reality. I learn quickly to always check for diamonds, and never check for traps. If I find myself in trouble, I can always do something confusing and provoke a context change. Writing âIn a large bowl, combine butter and sugarsâ is usually enough to teleport myself out of whatever situation Iâm in. I can always ask a giraffe for advice, although the giraffe usually isnât very helpful.
Without a particular mission to fulfill, the caves and chasms begin to blend into one another. I give myself missions, and that helps. Once I decide my goal is to put together a picnic (incessant âcheck for foodâ commands eventually yielded a sack with a lunch and a clove of garlic, belonging to a horse who agreed to join me on a picnic). Another time I demand a mission and am given some php code; i decide my mission is therefore to build a website, but am astounded when a unicorn steals my laptop. This is not the only time other content intrudes on the gameâs fantasy landscape - once the game tries to tell me about finding cash online, and another time I am sadly informed that there is no wi-fi. I encounter dinosaurs and troikas, none of which were in the original training data. Occasionally things get creepy as hell.
>> check for loot
CHECK FOR LOOT HERE CHECK FOR GOLD HERE CHECK FOR TORCH HERE CHECK FOR BONE HERE DO CHEST COMPRESSIONS AGAIN DO CHEST ROTATE DO CRESCENT MOON APPEAR IN THE ROOMâS CENTER
>> do back away slowly
DO BACK AWAY SLOWLY DO NOT OVERDO IT THE CHEST WILL EXPLODE AND YOU WILL DIE OKAY, SO YOU SEE ME
You can play the game too! Just follow the colab notebook link in Nathanâs blog post. Tips: 1) It may be more fun if you set yourself an arbitrary goal to reach. 2) If you find things getting repetitive, try adjusting the temperature in the âPlay the gameâ cell to 0.6 or 1.0.
To read the fulltext of a couple of my adventures (much too long to include here), enter your email and Iâll send them to you!
You can order my book You Look Like a Thing and I Love You! Itâs out November 5 2019.
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SkyKnit: When knitters teamed up with a neural network
[Make Caows and Shapcho - MeganAnn]
[Pitsilised Koekirjad Cushion Sampler Poncho - Maeve]
[Lacy 2047Â -Â michaela112358]
I use algorithms called neural networks to write humor. Whatâs fun about neural networks is they learn by example - give them a bunch of some sort of data, and theyâll try to figure out rules that let them imitate it. They power corporate finances, recognize faces, translate text, and more. I, however, like to give them silly datasets. Iâve trained neural networks to generate new paint colors, new Halloween costumes, and new candy heart messages. When the problem is tough, the results are mixed (there was that one candy heart that just said HOLE).
One of the toughest problems Iâve ever tried? Knitting patterns.
I knew almost nothing about knitting when @[email protected] sent me the suggestion one day. She sent me to the Ravelry knitting site, and to its adults-only, often-indecorous LSG forum, who as you will see are amazing people. (When asked how I should describe them, one wrote âdonât forget the glitter and swearing!â)
And so, we embarked upon Operation Hilarious Knitting Disaster.
The knitters helped me crowdsource a dataset of 500 knitting patterns, ranging from hats to squids to unmentionables. JC Briar exported another 4728 patterns from the site stitch-maps.com.Â
I gave the knitting patterns to a couple of neural networks that I collectively named âSkyKnitâ. Then, not knowing if they had produced anything remotely knittable, I started posting the patterns. Hereâs an early example.
MrsNoddyNoddy wrote, âitâs difficult to explain why 6395, 71, 70, 77 is so asthma-inducingly funny.â (It seems that a 6000-plus stitch count is, as GloriaHanlon put it, âoptimismâ).Â
As training progressed, and as I tried some higher-performance models, SkyKnit improved. Hereâs a later example.
Even at its best, SkyKnit had problems. It would sometimes repeat rows, or leave them out entirely. It could count rows fairly reliably up to about 22, but after that would start haphazardly guessing random largish numbers. SkyKnit also had trouble counting stitches, and would confidently declare at the end of certain lines that it contained 12 stitches when it was nothing of the sort.
But the knitters began knitting them. This possibly marks one of the few times in history when a computer generated code to be executed by humans.
[Mystery lace - datasock]
[Reverss Shawl - citikas]
[Frost - Odonata]
The knitters didnât follow SkyKnitâs directions exactly, as it turns out. For most of its patterns, doing them exactly as written would result in the pattern immediately unraveling (due to many dropped stitches), or turning into long whiplike tentacles (due to lots of leftover stitches). Or, to make the row counts match up with one another, they would have had to keep repeating the pattern until theyâd reached a multiple of each row count - sometimes this was possible after a few repeats, while other times they would have had to make the pattern tens of thousands of stitches long. And other times, missing rows made the directions just plain impossible.Â
So, the knitters just started fixing SkyKnitâs patterns.
Knitters are very good at debugging patterns, as it turns out. Not only are there a lot of knitters who are coders, but debugging is such a regular part of knitting that the complicated math becomes second nature. Notation is not always consistent, some patterns need to be adjusted for size, and some simply have mistakes. The knitters were used to taking these problems in stride. When working with one of SkyKnitâs patterns, GloriaHanlon wrote, âIâm trying not to fudge too much, basically working on the principle that the pattern was written by an elderly relative who doesnât speak much English.â
Each pattern required a different debugging approach, and sometimes knitters would each produce their own very different-looking versions. Here are three versions of âPaw Not Pointed 2 Stitch 2âł.
[Top - ActualJellyfish;Â Middle - LadyAurian;Â Bottom (sock version) - ShoelessJane]
Once, knitter MeganAnn came across a stitch that didnât even exist (something SkyKnit called âpbkâ). So she had to improvise. âI googled it and went with the first definition I got, which was âplace bead and knitâ.â The resulting pattern is âRibbed Rib Ribâ below (note bead).
[Ribbed Rib Rib - MeganAnn]
Even debugged, the patterns were weird. Like, really, really nonhumanly weird.
âI love how organic it comes out,â wrote Vastra. SylviaTX agreed, loving âthe organic seeming randomness. Like bubbles on water or something,âÂ
SkyKnitâs patterns were also a pain. Michaela112358 called Row 15 of Mystery Lace (above) âa bit of a head melterâ, commenting that it âlacked the rhythm that you tend to get with a normal patternâ. Maeve_ish wrote that Shetland Bird Pat âmade my brain hurt so I went to bed.â ShoelessJane asked, âOkay, now who here has read Snow Crash?â
[Winder Socks (2 versions) - TotesMyName]
âI was laughing a few days ago because I was trying to math a Skyknit pattern and my brainâŚfroze. Like, no longer could number at all. I stared blankly at my scribbles and at the screen wondering what had happened til somehow I rebooted. Yup, Skyknit crashed my brain.â - Rayn63
[Paw chain 2Â -Â HMSChicago]
On the pattern SkyKnit called âCherry and Acorns Twisted Toâ:
âCouple notes on the knitting experience, which while funny wasnât terribly pleasurable: Because thereâs no rhythm or symmetry to the pattern, I felt I was white-knuckling it through each line, really having to concentrate. There are also some stitch combinations that arenât very comfortable to execute physically, YO, SSK in particular.
That said, Iâm nearly tempted to add a bit of random AI lace to a project, perhaps as cuffs on a sweater or a short-row lace panel in part of a scarf, like Sylvia McFadden does in many of her shawl designs. As another person in the thread said, it would add a touch of spider-on-LSD.â -SarahScully
[cherry and acorns twisted to - Sarah Scully]
BridgetJâs comments on âButnet Scarfâ:
âFour repeats in to this oddball, daintily alien-looking 8-row lace pattern, and I have, improbably, begun to internalize it and get in to a rhythm like every other lace pattern.
I still have a lingering suspicion that Iâm knitting a pattern that could someday communicate to an AI that I want to play a game of Global Thermonuclear War, but I suppose at least Iâll have a scarf at the end of it?â -BridgetJ
[butnet scarf - BridgetJ]
There was also this beauty of a pattern, that SkyKnit called âTiny Baby Whale Sotoâ. GloriaHanlon managed somehow to knit it and described it as âa bona fide eldritch horror. Think Slenderman meets Cthulu and you wouldnât be far wrong.â
[Tiny Baby Whale Soto - GloriaHanlon]
Other than being a bit afraid of Tiny Baby Whale Soto, the knitters seem happy to do the bidding of SkyKnit, brain melts and all.
âI cast on for a lovely MKAL with a designer I totally trust and became immediately suspicious because the pattern made sense. All rows increase in an orderly manner. There are no âhuh?â moments. There are no maths at allâŚit has all been done for me. I thought I would be happy, yo. Instead, I am kind of missing the brain scrambling and I keep looking for pigs and tentacles. Go figure.â - Rayn63
Check out the rest of the SkyKnit-generated patterns, and the glorious rainbow of weird test-knits at SkyKnit: The Collection and InfiKnit.Â
Thereâs also a great article in the Atlantic that talks a bit more about the debugging.Â
If you feel so inspired (and donât mind the kind-hearted yet vigorous swearing), join the conversation on the LSG Ravelry SkyKnit thread - many of SkyKnitâs creations have not yet been test-knit at all, and others transform with every new knitterâs interpretation. Compare notes, commiserate, and do SkyKnitâs inscrutable bidding!
Heck yeah there is bonus material this week. Have some neural net-generated knitting & crochet titles. Some of them are mixed with metal band names for added creepiness. Enter your email here to get more like these:
Chicken Shrug Snuggle Features Cartube Party Filled Booties Corm Fullenflops Womp Mittens Socks of Death Tomb of Sweater Shawl Ruins
This is Everything, if you didnât already know
@werelibrarian
Icelandic sheep
Where are they GOING
TO VALHALLA
@alisonscotlock!!
finally someone asking the important questions
Julie Walters: âWho cares about getting old?â - interview in the Observer, 12-11-17. Photos: Phil Fisk.

Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
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A risk Iâm glad I took
rise and shine
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