Yesterday I ran across an amusing blog post from research scientist Janelle Shane who, just for the hell of it, has been “training this neural network to generate cookbook recipes by letting it look at tens of thousands of existing recipes.”
The recipes are pretty odd, as are the names the software picks for them, especially when Shane cranks up the “creativity” variable.
Here are a few that grabbed my attention:
- Cream Of Sour Cream Cheese Soup
- Artichoke Gelatin Dogs
- Crockpot Cold Water
- Chocolate Chocolate Chocolate Cake
Also yesterday, I ran across a horrifying post in the Incels subreddit in which the regulars attempted to come up with new pejorative terms for women. Oddly, many of the suggestions that weren’t completely obscene (“sperm garage”) or creepy (“future sex cadavers”) or just plain awkward (“the annoying, dumb, inferior pieces of flesh around the vagina that don’t invent or discover things”) ended up sounding, well, a bit like Shane’s computer-generated recipe titles.
So here’s a little quiz of sorts. I’ve mingled recipe titles from Shane’s neural-network experiment with anti-woman slurs from the Incels subreddit post. See if you can tell which are which!
- Cheese Hog
- Whole Chicken Cookies
- Sausage Jockey
- Meat Pockets
- Salmon Beef Style Chicken Bottom
- Completely Meat Circle
- Squeal Pig
- Roasties
- Bunny Boiler
- Cabbage Pot Cookies
Answers below!
In case you’re wondering, the neural-network-generated recipes will not actually produce anything resembling real food. The recipe for Greased Casserole with Slices of Lemon Juice, for example, requires a weird assortment of ingredients, including “1 cup cold boiled frosting,” “2 sprigs of bread,” and “1 sour and large fish.”
The instructions can be similarly baffling. One early recipe demanded that human chefs “bake until juice” and “sprinkle over skin greased with a boiling bowl.”
Things got even weirder when Shane plugged recipes into a neural network trained on H.P. Lovecraft, resulting in instructions like this:
Whip ½ pint of heavy cream. Add 4 Tbsp. brandy or rum to possibly open things that will never be wholly reported.
In a later experiment, she flipped the script, entering “phrases from Lovecraftian horror [into] an innocent neural network trained on 30MB of cookbook recipes,” which resulted in this almost perfect sentence:
Everything seemed to me tainted with a loathsome contagion, and inspired by a noxious alliance with the steamed chicken.
In conclusion, neural networks are fun. Certainly a lot more fun than incels.
ANSWERS: The computer-generated recipe titles are Whole Chicken Cookies, Salmon Beef Style Chicken Bottom, Completely Meat Circle, and Cabbage Pot Cookies. The rest are slurs for women.
OT but WOW!
Mike Flynn offers to testify on Trump-Russia in exchange for immunity
https://www.wsj.com/articles/mike-flynn-offers-to-testify-in-exchange-for-immunity-1490912959?mod=e2tw
Popcorn time.
@JoeB
http://i.imgur.com/QYDvEi6.gif
May I state, simply, that I love that this comments’ section has become, among other things, an elaborate discussion/debate on Lovecraft?
Stay awesome We Hunted the Mammoth. Stay awesome.
These wankers are ruining roast potatoes for me. Inexcusable.
Here’s an article from NYT on Mike Flynn’s possibly testimonies. Because WSJ has a long-in requirement to read their article.
Some quotes:
Something that concerns me a lot:
Riiight, Pence didn’t know. Riiight.
Guess who’s on video less than a year ago saying “When you are given immunity, that means you have probably committed a crime.”
http://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/video/michael-flynn-full-interview-trump-is-opening-huge-lead-772781123974
I absolutely love (read : fuckin’ hate) how they’re spinning this shit to scapegoat a few among themselves. Like, Flynn misled them ? Come on !
@SFHC
I haven’t done it yet but I looked at a few screenshots and it seems to be a glitch. Probably caused by all that green fog, stuff like that has a tendency to hide certain textures for some reason.
Thanks to everyone who has been suggesting Lovecraft inspired literature in this thread! Always a welcome addition.
@AsAboveSoBelow, Male Gaze Harvester
At least some of them indeed used to be human, in the original Lovecraft stories that is. However, that was not the case in the Night Gallery episode based on Pickman’s Model, where Pickman’s heritage (and likely his eventual transformation) is due to him being half-ghoul. Like I said, unnecessary and creepy sexual violence and forced pregnancy/birth component that later adaptations of Lovecraft’s work added for seemingly no reason other than the squick factor.
In the context of the universe, it makes even less sense: Why would so explicitly different and alien beings propagate their kind in such a mundane and decidedly non-alien way, with creatures they should by no stretch of the imagination be sexually incompatible with anyway? The Deep Ones are implied to be sort of an aquatic sister species to humans, so they get a pass, but even in The Shadow over Innsmouth, it was still sort of consensual between the two species, with actual marriages and families living in the titular town.
Personally, I think the “gradually changing into something else” thing, like what happened to Pickman, is indicative of cellular restructuring on a larger scale, perhaps brought on by an alien virus or something similar but not as well-understood. There are so many possibilities that tickle the imagination, and rape-as-a-plot-device is seriously lazy writing. I wish it would just go away already.
@Alan Robertshaw
Interesting. Could you elaborate on that a bit? Which stories, to be precise? I haven’t read any Bradbury, but you piqued my interest.
@EJ (Marxist Jazz Weasel)
That was an excellent analysis of the scientific context surrounding Lovecraft’s worldview and his work. Thank you!
Indeed, Lovecraft was a huge nerd, and the way he took scientific discoveries and let his imagination run wild on them is what I absolutely love about his work. The dichotomy that is his curiosity concerning all aspects of the cosmos and his paralyzing fear of the unknown makes his stories so uniquely his, with their shortcomings and all.
@Dodom
Point! I find it encouraging that Lovecraft was eventually able to call himself out on his own bullshit. A relevant quote:
“I can better understand the inert blindness & defiant ignorance of the reactionaries from having been one of them. I know how smugly ignorant I was. . . I really had thrown all that haughty, complacent, snobbish, self-centred, intolerant bull, & at a mature age when anybody but a perfect damned fool would have known better! . . . It’s hard to have done all one’s growing up since 33—but that’s a damn sight better than not growing up at all.”
HPL in a letter to Catherine L. Moore, February 7, 1937
@Malitia
Awww, Unspeakable Vault is so cute! It’s clear that the creator knows their Lovecraft and geeky pop culture, and combines them with silly humor to great effect. As a side note, I found the broken English in the earlier incarnations of the comic (if I’m not mistaken, the creator is French) to make it sort of extra adorkable.
@Helix_luco:
Aw, thanks! Great minds and all that.
@Victorious Parasol
I actually did try to read it, but the fanservice-y approach kinda put me off. I dunno, it really bothered me for some reason.
That novella is the only thing I’ve read by him – I had a bit of an obsession with Antarctica as a kid (specifically Antarctica, dunno why), and I still like reading books about it. In “Mountains” some of the ancient creatures are sympathetic, but other ones (that aren’t really seen) are still horrible beings of cosmic horror and such.
@WWTH:
Voyager and DS9 are both well worth watching. Other people have kinda tackled Voyager pretty thoroughly, so I’ll just mention that DS9 is my favorite Star Trek series largely because of the character relationships. It still has a lot of bumpy roads, the early seasons are weak just like every non-TOS series, and the Dominion War that takes up the last three seasons I think is a bit of a love-it-or-hate-it deal, but I think DS9 deals the best with actually putting characters in complicated situations that can’t just be solved through phasers or science, and with developing interactions between unique and interesting character combinations.
@ anarchonist
You may enjoy “Usher II”. That’s one of the Martian Chronicles. I don’t want to give away any spoilers but briefly it’s set after a great book burning purge on Earth so a chap goes to Mars to be able to enjoy all the old horror classics.
There’s also “Pillar of Fire”. That’s set in a future where all ‘unpleasant’ and ‘morbid’ things have been banned (seeing a theme here) including the works of Lovecraft (a librarian thinks it’s a sex manual). A reanimated corpse sets about re-introducing a little horror to the cloyingly nice society.
@ Lovecraft generally
You may also enjoy this Neil Gaiman mash-up of Lovecraft and Sherlock Holmes.
http://www.neilgaiman.com/mediafiles/exclusive/shortstories/emerald.pdf
@malitia:
Thanks for reminding me of that! I used to read it years ago, and I’m glad it’s still around.
@Handsome Jack:
@Sinkable John:
That’s hilarious. That’s absolutely made my day.
Is there literally anyone in the world except Jared Kushner whom Trump has not pissed off in the last week?
Thanks, Dslucia.
I have a couple more Lovecraft adjacent recs.
The Fewdio Horror short film Conviction. If you were afraid of monsters under the bed as a kid, this one will get to you! My phone is cranky about posting YouTube videos right now but it’s easily found by searching Fewdio Conviction. Watch all their other videos while you’re at it.
The other is Crouch End by Stephen King. I recommend this one even for people who don’t normally like him because it’s not very similar to most of his stuff. It’s short so there’s no time for character development which is King’s weakness IMO. It’s scary as fuck. More so than the original Lovecraft Cthulu stuff because it’s a lot more subtle and creepy. It’s about an American couple in London. They go to visit someone out in the suburbs. Get lost and stumble into that dimension. Sometimes when I’m walking at sunset and there’s no traffic or people around I think of that story and spook myself. In fact, I think I’m going to read it tonight. It’s been awhile.
Irving Cobb and Allgernon Blackwood might also be of interest to Lovecraft fans.
Cobb wrote of a southern black protagonist who was a fishy person before Lovecraft wrote about fishy people and likely inspired Lovecraft.
The only thing worse than an eldritch abomination would be an eldritch abomination that went to art school.
Excuse me, I’ll have you know I went to a graphic design school, thankyouverymuch.
Excuse me for not having the technical skills (and not having supportive enough family because they buy into the “art can’t make money!” and “you need money to be happy!” schools of thought) to go to an art school like I originally wanted. ಥ_ಥ
[/sorta joke]
Crouch End also featured in Will Self’s short story The North London Book of the Dead. When you die, you simply move to a different part of London. It’s gloriously snobbish and London-centric, in a way which will raise a knowing snort from any Londoner.
@ Paradoxy
Yes, but you’re a nice artist. Crouch End is for people who won’t go to Hoxton because there’s nowhere to park a Range Rover.
The Cats of Ulthar is definitely my favorite Lovecraft story, and I have chosen to believe that it is a true story because, I mean, obviously cats would do that.
Paradoxy and Alan – omg I grew up in Crouch End and have lived in Hoxton for the past 16 years! When I lived in Crouch End there were no Range Rovers, Crouch End was a bit of a hippy haven years ago.
I went to the same school as Gillian Anderson – who spent some time in London as a child.
I was a Graphic Design major until I moved in with Husbeast. I relocated 100 miles south and there are no schools (still) that have a Graphic Design degree choice here. >:(
I’ve noticed that good graphic designers are very smart* people; they have to be well-versed in everything else (math, history, science, writing, social sciences, psychology) in order to do their job well. It’s not just making nice-looking images; in order to be effective, you have to know about pretty much everything else!
*One of my instructors was actually kind of scary-smart.
@ ellesar
We were neighbours weren’t we? 🙂 (I used to live above Les’s)
The thing I find bemusing about the ‘weathy creatives’ crowd in Crouch End is how perversely proud they are about there no longer being a train station. It’s an interesting demographic that regards ‘no public transport’ as a major feature.
Having said that I do like the ‘linear park’ thing that the old railway became.
Oh oh, I also recommend the short story “A Colder War” by Charles Stross, sort of Lovecraft + cold war + a bit of Antarctica.
And Kevin Brockmeier’s novel The Brief History of the Dead – less horror, more fantasy, but also some Antarctica!
…And and and, if you want to read a story where the South Pole is discovered by a group of South America women, there’s Ursula K LeGuin’s “Sur”, which is really good.
I read a really good YA book, it was a mixture of Steampunk + Lovecraft + Faeries. I wish I could remember the title.
Crock pot cold water. Finally! Something I can cook!
Anybody here ever heard of James Lileks? He has something called The Gallery of Regrettable Food (http://www.lileks.com/institute/gallery/index.html) that spawned two books making fun of 1950’s recipes that featured the most unappetizing combinations imaginable, typically encased in gelatin. Artichoke Gelatin Dogs would be a perfect complement.
In general, Lileks celebrates and ridicules (about equally) 50’s pop culture.