{"id":1351,"date":"2017-05-18T22:25:56","date_gmt":"2017-05-19T05:25:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/otherthings.com\/blog\/?p=1351"},"modified":"2017-05-18T22:25:56","modified_gmt":"2017-05-19T05:25:56","slug":"quality-nonsense","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/otherthings.com\/blog\/2017\/05\/quality-nonsense\/","title":{"rendered":"Quality Nonsense"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve long been a fan of nonsense. (It seem me who they look where to sit down one’s.)<\/a>\u00a0Unlike its near relatives\u2014noise, lies, and bullshit<\/a>\u2014real nonsense is surprisingly hard to construct, because the sense-making instinct runs deep with us humans. So when I see a performance like Vanessa Bayer’s as “Dawn Lazarus” in this SNL skit<\/a> I tend to take notice. Which then leads me down a rabbit hole<\/a> of related arts like double-talk<\/a>\u00a0(which is easier if you do it in a foreign language<\/a>) and good old Engrish menu fails<\/a>. Meanwhile, the glorious internet digs up treasures from the pre-Google era, like the player names in\u00a0Fighting Baseball:<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Now, in 2017, machine learning comes on the scene and opens entirely new frontiers for nonsense-lovers. Witness this attempt to train a neural network\u00a0to generate paint color names<\/a> based on the contents of the Sherwin-Williams catalog (producing some names that could have come straight out of LiarTown, USA<\/a>):<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I wasn’t sure about machine learning before, but it’s growing on me.<\/p>\n

Links via @golan<\/a>, via @annaleen<\/a>, and via the great glorious Internet, long may she reign.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve long been a fan of nonsense. (It seem me who they look where to sit down one’s.)\u00a0Unlike its near relatives\u2014noise, lies, and bullshit\u2014real nonsense is surprisingly hard to construct, because the sense-making instinct runs deep with us humans. So when I see a performance like Vanessa Bayer’s as “Dawn Lazarus” in this SNL skit … Continue reading Quality Nonsense<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fun","category-mystran"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/otherthings.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/otherthings.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/otherthings.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/otherthings.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/otherthings.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1351"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/otherthings.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1351\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1358,"href":"https:\/\/otherthings.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1351\/revisions\/1358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/otherthings.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/otherthings.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/otherthings.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}