Recovery is not linear

My current partner has lived on his own for 8 years and the absolute most I have to help him with is maybe sending him $20 so he can make a bill payment on time

After I left, in the first six months I got texts or calls asking me to please tell him:

The online banking password (dude, I left you, you should really change that)

Where I ordered his special-wecial organic underwear

Where the good cutting board was (my dad gave it to us at our wedding, genius, I took it with me along with the rest of the stuff from my family)

What brand butter we bought

What brand of local kielbasa we bought

Who his doctor was

What RMV office had the shortest lines

Where the old tax returns were (in the fucking box labeled tax returns)

The phone number for his best friend

I shit you not.

Then he had a heart attack (mild) and none of his family or friends were around to take him to the hospital. But instead of calling 911, he called me, who by then lived 45 minutes away. He lived 5 minutes from an EMS dispatch location. He called me, despite the fact that he didn’t believe me 8 months prior when I was feeling suicidal and I had to call a cab to go alone to check myself into the hospital for a 72-hour hold. I told him to call 911, hung up on him when he whined about “making a fuss”, called 911, called his siblings and then texted them “your brother is having a heart attack, I called 911 for him, come home,” and washed my hands of it.

The whole family is currently waiting for my grandpa to die so my grandma can finally go free, because she’s so stuck into her role as a caretaker that’s the only way to force her to let this shitbag go.

*moves an image a mm to the left*

Owner asks dogs to hide because customer is scared of dogs

[Three dogs are sleeping on a welcome mat of a shop of some kind. A cat is nestled in between them.]

Owner: Customers are coming. They’re scared of dogs. Hurry up. Customers are coming.

[Dogs slowly get up and walk off to the back in single file. Cat remains on the front step. Just before the last dog enters the back room, the owner calls out again.]

Owner: Teng (Dog’s name), go get Xiao Bao (Cat’s name) too. Go fetch Xiao Bao

[Dog turns back to the entrance and gently drags the clearly reluctant cat back inside. The owner speaks softly as the dog approaches the camera]

Owner (softly): All right, put (the cat) down.

[The owner gives what looks like dried jerky to the dog]

Owner: Let Xiao Bao eat some. Let Xiao Bao eat some.

Dog refuses to get out of bed then proceeds to fall asleep looking after baby

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).

When I trained GPT-2 on the list of cat names using Max Woolf’s colab notebook, it still retained a lot of what it had learned from the rest of the internet. Gone were the strange names like “Tilly-Mapper” and “Balllucidoux” - it had a bunch of real words it could use instead. Here are some of the names it came up with - and the Morris Animal Refuge (who you may remember from that time they used neural net names for their guinea pigs) has given some of these names to some highly adoptable kittens.

First, neural net can do fancy:

Taffeta Pompompur Monocle Tom Glitter Notion Tinnitus Cheesemonger M. Tinklesby Linklater Soap

It can also do the opposite of fancy:

Scat Cat Butthole Gangrene Moisture Grotesque Petard Oilbag Buttwig The Cream Meatbag Dr Fart Fudge Putty Scumbag Constipation BUTT

And it can also do names ranging from tough to downright sinister:

Miss Vulgar Lillith The Vamp Elle Fury Deadbolt Romeo of Darkness Starmaker Fist Warning Signs Bibles Smoked The Firestarter Higher Rune Scarlet Be Thy Coat Kill All Humans Bones Of The Master Mr. Sinister Evil Whispers Spawn Serendipitous Kill Stranglehold

(Starmaker and Sparky Buttons are from a litter that had upper respiratory infections that damaged their eyes, but even though their world is kinda cloudy, they love to play and cuddle.)

I’m a particular fan of the Very Weird cat names:

Honeystring Dr Leg Tom Noodle Pinball Scene Peanutbutterjiggles You’re Telling A Lie Beep Boop Thoughts Bobble Bun Atmosphere You Name It Whiskeridoo Sparky Buttons

Seemingly This Guy Various Authors Chicken Whiskey Fish Especially Thelonious Monsieur Ringo Shuffles Sweet Cakes EXTAs (Eye Stalks) Checker Spin Donut Quin Two Patz Grandpa He Glad Funky Moe Fluttering Feelers Accepted A Tribute Chewie Bean PLEASE Gregory Chimney Notable PRODUCT LEGEND Weird Science Platinum Not Suitable For Character the Enforcer

Did I mention these cats are adoptable? If you live near Philadelphia, you live near these kitties!