Isildur’s Bane

Resident Evil Village: The Four Lords • minimalist posters.

there actually is one unique aspect of humans that's INCREDIBLY dangerous to small animals, especially birds! can you guess what it is?

I'll give you a hint: it's on your head right now.

that's right! FUR HAIR IS MURDER.

see, human hair isn't just long, it's INCREDIBLY strong- if your hair is long enough, go ahead and pluck a strand from your head right now, then gently pull it between your hands until it finally breaks.

how much strength did that take? do you think a lizard or a small bird could generate that kind of force?

(spoiler! no.)

(because he is just a little boy.)

so what happens is a small animal gets one of its extremities tangled up in a long strand of discarded human hair, and if it can't reach the strand to bite it off or doesn't even have teeth in the first place, it's stuck!

(like this but way sadder)

and because human hair doesn't decay in any kind of a reasonable timeframe, the animal will STAY tangled until something yanks on the end of the hair and pulls it tight, cutting off bloodflow to the affected limb. if this isn't corrected by a helpful passer-by, the limb will die and fall off.

this is why there's been an epidemic of toeless pigeons in urban centers in recent years- they get their feet tangled in hair and lose their toes!

I was going to try and say something funny here, but, well.

Midway through 2020, people started suggesting that I train a neural net on 2020 headlines, and I was skeptical that there would be enough weird ones to make a decent project. Then 2020 continued to be 2020. We started to get headlines such as:

Mysterious alien-like monolith discovered in Utah desert What you need to know about ‘murder hornets’ The Mystery of The Platypus Deepens With The Discovery of Its Biofluorescent Fur Famous Vienna hotel turns to drive-in cake

And by the time we got to December, with more bioluminescent marsupials, mysterious monoliths, and the Galactic Federation, my course was clear.

I decided to use GPT-3, whose internet training data was all collected before October 2019. In other words, before 2020 happened. I gave GPT3 a list of 2020 headlines and let it add more text to the list. Having no data from 2020, would it even treat these as real headlines?

A lot of the generated headlines were from the natural world, in part because my list of examples tended to favor those. I really can’t tell if these are attempts to do novel but realistic headlines, or to completely goof around.

Swarming bears are given deadly slingshots by Russian hunters Good news / Bad news about crows in Burlington schools When Killer Orchids Attack: How the Deadly Corpse Orchid Is Turning Up in U.S. Backyards Apparently There is No Good Photo of the “Melbourne Spider” Desert mystery - what is this rock that looks like a plane ticket? Fears rise of new dwarf hippo public relations disaster after rise in sightings Mysterious Origin of Monster Deep-sea Toads Solved What are 'dragon cats’ and why they are getting hyped? Massive radioactive sinkhole continues to grow in Russia Why scientists believe the 'Killer Raccoons of the Pacific Northwest’ are responsible for this kill Lycoperdons, the tiny deadly puffballs, are on the march again From deep in the Earth, darkness “boils” to the surface A sassy tardigrade previews new Doctor Who

With other generated headlines, it looks more like GPT-3 assessed the 2020 headlines and went, “Murder hornets? Yeah okay and hellhounds too.” (This is clearly an algorithmic error; hellhounds are MUCH more likely to be found at the Denver International Airport.)

Proof that a hellhound is living at Los Angeles Airport has been provided in the photos below First naked bogman has been found out walking the great British countryside Reports of a '10-foot tall penguin’ roaming about on the Family Islands in the Solomon Islands are investigated Albino green sea monster filmed … at the wrong time Scientists discover the alien ant farm under the Antarctic ice Lizardman: The Terrifying Tale of the Lizard Man of Scape Ore Swamp

I like its science/technology headlines. So many good little bots.

Researchers fear our solar system is being interfered with by alien space lasers Mars rover finds only artificial organic matter on surface Scientists Recreate Giant Liopleurodon In Lab 'Lost’ NASA space shuttle repair robot comes back to life after four decades in complete darkness Hey, Curiosity Rover, Don’t Go Chasing Shadow Bugs Small drone takes on six killer sharks in Shipwreck (Video) Mysterious Hole Observed On the Sun How did we miss this massive alien spaceship lurking on an abandoned asteroid? Scorpions on the dark side of the moon NASA: Has Earth 'Halted’ And Stopped Spinning - If What NASA States is True, We Must All Celebrate! NOW!

i only showed the most interesting sorts of headlines; plenty were just ordinary news from 2019 or earlier. Others were new, technically, but not exactly news:

Breathing Is “Supercharging” Brain Voyager 1 images: See contents of interstellar space Scientists Take Photos In See-Through Scuba Gear, and This Is What They Got Scientists do science… … and then write about it! Scientists say climate change deniers should sit on a beach until it is underwater

I tried another experiment in which I tried to produce more targeted headlines, around the theme of… tumbleweeds. (It turns out there were a LOT of dramatic tumbleweed headlines in 2020, due to their habit of descending on various places in apocalyptic numbers) If you’d like to read the results, let me know and I’ll email them to you.

AS YOUR LIFE POINTS GO DOWN, SO DOES YOUR PLATFORM.

WHOEVER REACHES ZERO FIRST WILL MEET THE ELECTRIFIED WIRES SURROUNDING THIS ARENA