Hard to predict really….we always thought insects would hold out through anything, but a combination of climate change, pesticides and fertilizers seems to have caused all the world’s insects to plummet. Even in the best-preserved rainforests right now, surveys find only half as many insects by volume as they did just 50 years go, a drop in global biomass that has likely never happened so quickly in all the planet’s existence.
It’s likely that some species of every insect and arachnid group will survive at least in small pockets, while some will thrive and spread. Ticks for instance love hot, dry climates and are surging all over the globe. Desert species will probably do okay.
Here in the Northern hemisphere, there’s finally a chill in the air, bringing with it an avalanche of decorative gourds and a generous helping of pumpkin spice. Let’s see if an artificial neural network can get into the spirit of things.
Earlier, I trained a neural network to generate names of craftbeers, thanks to Ryan Mandelbaum of Gizmodo, who inspired the project, and Andy Haraldson who extracted hundreds of thousands of beer names from BeerAdvocate.com. The beer names came in categories, and one of them, as it turns out, was “Pumpkin”. Now, clearly, is the time for this category. I added the beers from the “spice” and “winter warmers” category, making a total of 3584 beers, and I gave the list to a neural network to try to imitate.
(Beer labels generated via Grogtag.com)
Kill Ale Alive Ale Lemonic Beer Warmer Hollow La Spiced Fright Brew Organic Mar And Doug Strawbone Masher Not Beer Bog Porter Pumpkin Pickle Blood Barrel Beer Stumpkin Ale Santalion Winter Ale Pumpkin Man Gruppie’s Pampkin Belging Main Ale Winter Winter This Dead Ale
The names came out rather spookier than I had expected. Sometimes that happens when I forget that the neural net had previously been trained on metal bands or diseases or something, but in this case, the previous dataset had been Neopets foods.
So, naturally, my next step was to train this neural network for just a little while – just long enough – on metal bands. Via transfer learning, I could get the neural net to apply some of its pumpkin spice knowledge to its new task of generatng metal bands. I just had to stop the training before catastrophic forgetting happened – that is, before the neural net forgot everything it knew about pumpkins and just went 100% metal. It took just a few seconds of training to turn the pumpkin spice ales just the right amount of metal.
Operation: Spoopify was a success.
Secret Death Ale Ale Gore Pumpkin Winter Holes Flesh Head Spice Gore Spice Prophecy Dead Pumpkin Storm Pumpkin Area Child Shadow Ale Dragon’s Winter Horse Pumpkin Rotten Illusage Man Spine I Purpky Stumpkin Pumpkin Imperial Sin Skin Ale Bleeding Ale Winter Suul Pumpkin Disaster Grave Void
But what if I want a slightly different feel? Less gory, more uncanny? Nobody does uncanny like the podcast Welcome to Night Vale, in which ominous lights appear above the Arby’s and screaming voids are a routine road hazard. It turns out that a neural net with Night Vale transcripts in its training history will retain strong and haunting memories of this past for quite a while. So friends, Welcome to Night Vale Pumpkin Ale .
Faceless Ole Ale [Head] Oh Ale Do I The Winter Face Welcoming Ale Hey God Slacks. Ginger Pull, Winking Head The Secret Pumpkin Pumpkin But Pumpkin and Oh But Pumpkin Ale Human OK? I leaked the root like the heads [BEEP] Nothing Pumpkin Pumpkin Ale I do need the news of The Guns The Corrected Pumpkin Angel Pumpkin’s Garfacksksknes
For the results of one more experiment in which I trained the neural net on the pumpkin ales plus Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” as well as the more, um “spicy” pumpkin ales, enter your email here. You can optionally get cool bonus material every time I post!
I’m making jokes but like this is literally so crazy — as tho like Sexual encounters between adults is something we all need to be protected from by corporations… as tho the whole point of Facebook wasn’t started as a way to evaluate women’s sexual attractiveness
Sex workers told everyone that FOSTA/SESTA was the beginning and justification of a substantial amount of internet surveillance + control and that got totally ignored.
This is on FB, right?
It’s almost like they want to erase any sign of LGBTQ+ folks whatsoever. Hmmmmmm
This isn’t limited to public spaces like your profile and groups either, these restrictions include Messenger.
I’ve been joking with my long distance partner about eventually having to keep certain conversations to snailmail correspondence but seriously what the fuck kind of dystopian bullshit
They keep mentioning how in a passage of the New Testament Jesus was celebrating Chanukah/ “Jesus would have celebrated Chanukah!” And that’s why they should celebrate to LMAOOO I can’t believe this
Me, six hours ago when I saw said post: no way this could get worse
Me, after reading this: so I was terribly wrong
Okay this is SO fucking gross I can’t even begin to describe how I’m feeling.
Like… The very ESSENCE of Channukah is that it not only celebrates the miracle of the oil lasting eight days, it ALSO celebrates the victory of Jews over those who would seek to force them to assimilate. Over those who wanted us gone, our religion and culture destroyed.
Like the idea of goyim celebrating any Jewish holiday and putting their own spin on it fucking infuriates me, but the fact that they have decided that a holiday which commemorates Jewish resistance to EXACTLY the kind of assimilationist bullshit that they pull basically 24/7 makes me want to throw up.
To quote my rabbi, “their well keeps running dry, and so they want to steal from our well.”
Shalom goyim! So listen, I just talked to the prophetess Miriam and she said:
counter point: this is the exact opposite of the kind of assimilation the Jewish people fought
if they were fighting to keep there traditions from being erased then that means the people they were fighting against wanted that holiday gone
while these people on the other hand want to experience that holiday, which would lead to more calibration of the holiday not less.
culture isn’t zero sum game. If one culture invents the hat and another culture copies the hat then you just have more hats. the well wont run dry because its not a well in the first place
also at first I was resistant to this for my own reasons but then I realized this would probably help defeat antisemitism. Because, the Jewish people and culture would come off as less foreign and exclusive.
It isn’t our job to come off as less foreign and inclusive. This isn’t going to help defeat antisemitism. It’s a form of antisemitism. They’re taking one of OUR holidays, adding in a religion that has historically hated the jews, and removing all that is Jewish. If you think for one second that this is anything shy of Jewish erasure, you’re delusional.
im not saying it is your job to be less foreign and more inclusive. this Hanukah thing would happen if Jewish people supported it or just didn’t engage with the idea.
look cultures melt and change all the time. Gypses brought the guitar and flamenco dancing to Spain, the cresant is the result of an invasion and the Roman Empire wouldn’t have existed if they hadn’t taken basically everything from Greece. this kind of stuff is inevitable.
there not taking “the jewish” out of Hanukah there creating there own version of Hanukah. Our people (yes our im ethnically jewish (but not culturally involved)) aren’t losing anything. you don’t have to stop celebrating your version of the holiday.
most importantly its a lot harder to separate a group into us and them when we eat the same food and celebrate the same holidays.
Okay, but they don’t have that right to make their own Chanukah. The whole fucking point of Chanukah is another nation and culture trying to change the Jewish culture. Like. Anyone who’s read the book of Maccabees know this.
They have no interest in understanding the Jewish people. If they did, they wouldn’t be celebrating Chanukah. Their interest, as it has always been, is to erase that which is Jewish. And the fact another Jew is defending their blatant antisemitism is appalling.
What’s next? Them stealing Pseach (wait they’ve done that), celebrating RH (oh wait they’ve done that), having BMs for…wait they’ve done that too. This isn’t just one tiny thing. They’re taking Jewish culture and adding in a Pagan God. Maybe to you, that’s not a big deal. But to me, to religious Jews, and to most of the Jews who have reblogged this. It’s. A. Big. Fucking. Deal.
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