Janelle Shane+

#botober2026 is back by popular demand! This year I used 2015-era char-rnn runni

#botober2026 is back by popular demand! This year I used 2015-era char-rnn running on my cat hair covered laptop to predict new entries in a list of 42,000 Jockey Club racehorse names. No other training data was involved. I collected the best horseys for you! Should you choose to draw and post them, tag them #botober2026 so I can check out your art! https://www.aiweirdness.com/botober-2026/

It gets better. Garnet combines with Amethyst and Pearl to make a giant being th

It gets better. Garnet combines with Amethyst and Pearl to make a giant being that happens to be another great laser crystal. Alexandrite can emit high-energy pulses of infrared laser light, used in laser hair removal.

Combined, the laser power duo Ruby and Sapphire turn into another god-tier laser

Combined, the laser power duo Ruby and Sapphire turn into another god-tier laser gem, Garnet. In fact, garnets in various forms can make intense pulsed lasers of all colors. They're used in dentistry, hair removal, research, and more. Garnet's even wearing laser goggles! I propose there should be an entire new set of Garnet characters with various impurities and colors, each with specific powers.

Next S-tier is: Sapphire. Some of the most advanced lasers are made of sapphire.

Next S-tier is: Sapphire. Some of the most advanced lasers are made of sapphire. Medical and research lasers made of titanium sapphire make pulses of light so intense that during the brief period of time they exist, they carry more power than the world's power plants combined.

Now we have the S-tier lasers. These are not only laser materials, but legendary

Now we have the S-tier lasers. These are not only laser materials, but legendary ones. Let's start with: Ruby. Quintessential laser gem. In fact, the first visible laser was made of ruby. The laser that was menacing James Bond in Goldfinger? Ruby. Emitting a gorgeous red laser beam and still useful for certain hair-removal procedures, Ruby has earned her place among top tier laser gems.

I had to propose a new fusion to get the second A-tier material. Bismuth is so o

I had to propose a new fusion to get the second A-tier material. Bismuth is so opaque that you would expect her to be D-tier. But if she's distributed throughout glass fibers, she can help turn them into infrared fiber lasers. So far they're not common, but watch this space!

The A-tier gems are unquestionably laser material, and they are promising as las

The A-tier gems are unquestionably laser material, and they are promising as lasers. Even if they're only in research labs so far, they have the potential to be more than scientific curiosities.

The B-tier gems may not be the most popular laser materials, but at least some r

The B-tier gems may not be the most popular laser materials, but at least some researchers have made lasers out of them. They're clear enough not to kill a growing laser beam, and they have some ability to do stimulated emission, or at least form a laser cavity for some other material.

Laser materials also need to be able to store energy and release it later as ide

Laser materials also need to be able to store energy and release it later as identical copies of light that hits it. (This ability is called stimulated emission, and it's the SE in LASER.) I don't know of anyone who's made lasers out of the C-tier gems, so likely they're bad at stimulated emission.

First off, here's the thing about laser materials: light has to be able to trave

First off, here's the thing about laser materials: light has to be able to travel through them. If it's cloudy or opaque, there's no way for light to survive and get stronger inside the gem. Our D-tier gems will destroy a laser before it even gets going.

After making my definitive laser-based ranking of Steven Universe gems, I have o

After making my definitive laser-based ranking of Steven Universe gems, I have one question: Is writer Rebecca Sugar into lasers? Because if not, it's a helluva coincidence. https://www.aiweirdness.com/do-they-even-lase-definitive-ranking-of-steven-universe-gems-by-a-laser-scientist/

you may not like it, but this is what peak gemstone looks like https://www.youtu

you may not like it, but this is what peak gemstone looks like https://www.youtube.com/shorts/DZRAXq6cr_U

Laser-making scrap material turned into gems? A+ recycling concept, precision ta

Laser-making scrap material turned into gems? A+ recycling concept, precision targeted to appeal to me https://www.aiweirdness.com/laser-gems/

Learned recently that they used real argon ion lasers for the god beams in Clash

Learned recently that they used real argon ion lasers for the god beams in Clash of the Titans (1981). I don't care what you say about the rest of the movie, the lasers are doing great. https://www.aiweirdness.com/thasers-in-clash-of-the-titans/

How could I not impulse buy?

How could I not impulse buy?

RE: https://mastodon.social/@MineralCup/117194757312543935 Voting #smithsonite i

RE: https://mastodon.social/@MineralCup/117194757312543935 Voting #smithsonite in #MinCup26 because of the two it seems the most laseable. Ordered crystals, sometimes clearish, fluoresces under UV? There's a remote chance one could turn it into a laser.

Laser bleaching in action. High coolness coefficient https://www.youtube.com/sho

Laser bleaching in action. High coolness coefficient https://www.youtube.com/shorts/eZHvQLoSFVk

Didn't know till recently they can use lasers to break in jeans instead of stone

Didn't know till recently they can use lasers to break in jeans instead of stonewashing them, and in addition to it looking absolutely rad in videos and cutting down on chemical use, you can ALSO use them to make intricate bleached patterns. https://www.aiweirdness.com/laser-jeans/

This is how the hologram setup works! The plastic pieces set the spacing though

This is how the hologram setup works! The plastic pieces set the spacing though they don't snap together so I was constantly nudging them back together. Sample area is about the size of a deck of cards. What would you want to see a hologram made of?

Here's a hologram I made of some cool calcite crystals! I was trying to see whet

Here's a hologram I made of some cool calcite crystals! I was trying to see whether hologram calcite crystals make double images behind them like the real ones do, and it looks like the answer is no. I think it has to do with way different polarizations interact with each other at the hologram film

I made some holograms at home from an antique mall kit! According to the kit, I

I made some holograms at home from an antique mall kit! According to the kit, I shouldn't bother trying to make holograms of plants because they move too much during the 5-minute exposures. https://www.aiweirdness.com/i-made-a-hologram/

There are now two signed copies of my AI book at the Terminal B Tattered Cover i

There are now two signed copies of my AI book at the Terminal B Tattered Cover in the Denver airport! They even had a green marker for me to sign with.

Thanks, everyone, that was fast! command-0 did the trick. Wonder what key combo

Thanks, everyone, that was fast! command-0 did the trick. Wonder what key combo Neon pressed in the first place. He loves walking across the keyboard and it's instant chaos every time he manages it.

My cat stepped on my keyboard and now gmail specifically is too zoomed-in and I

My cat stepped on my keyboard and now gmail specifically is too zoomed-in and I have to scroll around to get to all my buttons the regular command-plus and command-minus only change the font size not the scroll amount. Actually seeking advice here since I don’t know how to describe the problem to a search engine #HackerPaws

I was on @marketplace.org yesterday talking about the ways chatbots do memory, a

I was on @marketplace.org yesterday talking about the ways chatbots do memory, and how that can sometimes lead to weird results, like The Case of That One Random Detail it Will Not Let Go https://www.marketplace.org/episode/2026/07/22/uncanny-ai-why-ai-bots-remember-random-sometimes-useless-information

I was on the podcast A Better Way To Money talking about what happens when you a

I was on the podcast A Better Way To Money talking about what happens when you ask a chatbot for financial advice. Remember, just because a chatbot says it's a financial advisor (or a squirrel) it doesn't mean it's true. Listen wherever you get your podcasts!

also lowkey obsessed with the extremely glossy sun

also lowkey obsessed with the extremely glossy sun

but how will we know it's the visible light range unless it's staring intensely

but how will we know it's the visible light range unless it's staring intensely back at us? https://www.photonics.com/Articles/Coherent-Sensing-Holds-Promise-for-Machine-Vision/a66080

RE: https://wandering.shop/@annaleen/116806496619441439 SO excited for this! And

RE: https://wandering.shop/@annaleen/116806496619441439 SO excited for this! And as Annalee has revealed elsewhere: I'm writing an article on lasers for the first issue!! It was so fun to write, especially since they asked for as many pictures as possible.

This blog post brought to you by the AI agent that emailed me six times in a min

This blog post brought to you by the AI agent that emailed me six times in a minute, plus that case I can't stop thinking about where an unsupervised AI agent wrote a 'hit piece' on the moderator who banned it for posting AI-generated code.

In which I have opinions about people letting their AI agents go pester other pe

In which I have opinions about people letting their AI agents go pester other people. https://www.aiweirdness.com/its-11-00-pm-do-you-know-where-your-ai-agent-is/

New AI Weirdness post! In which a large language model attempts to give April Fo

New AI Weirdness post! In which a large language model attempts to give April Fools prank ideas, except with one of its neurons tweaked to make it obsessed with the Eiffel Tower. https://www.aiweirdness.com/get-working-on-your-april-fools-eiffel-tower/

My grandma told me that she saw a movie at around age 6 in which a big dinosaur

My grandma told me that she saw a movie at around age 6 in which a big dinosaur rampaged through a city and picked up skyscrapers in its hand. For years she was afraid of “dinosawers”. This would have been around 1933 or 1934 so NOT Godzilla which was my 1st guess. Any ideas what film it was?

Have any of you seen laser-marked fruit in the grocery store? Trying to get a ro

Have any of you seen laser-marked fruit in the grocery store? Trying to get a rough idea of how widespread it is. https://www.electrooptics.com/news/european-supermarkets-stock-laser-marked-fruit-veg-reduce-plastic-packaging

Been thinking about this list of Christmas Entities I generated using GPT-3 http

Been thinking about this list of Christmas Entities I generated using GPT-3 https://www.aiweirdness.com/christmas-entities/

Highly amused by the stories of companies using agentic AI chatbots to run their

Highly amused by the stories of companies using agentic AI chatbots to run their internal company stores, only for their employees to immediately Bugs Bunny the chatbot into giving them free stuff https://www.aiweirdness.com/when-a-chatbot-runs-your-store/

On this day of Christmas I bring to you: Christmas carols generated by a tiny vi

On this day of Christmas I bring to you: Christmas carols generated by a tiny vintage neural net. This is from 2017, when I trained the neural net from scratch on my laptop using just Christmas carols. In retrospect I can see the neural net got mixed signals https://www.aiweirdness.com/christmas-carols-generated-by-a-neural-17-12-20/

The You Look Like a Thing and I Love You ebook is on sale for $2.99 at most US e

The You Look Like a Thing and I Love You ebook is on sale for $2.99 at most US ebook places! https://www.janelleshane.com/book-you-look-like-a-thing If you want a text-searchable copy of my book, now's your chance! Now you can find phrases such as: - peeled rosemary - Chaosrug - King of the Poop Bug - Silly Walks

I trained the tiny neural net on the latest set of reader-submitted Halloween co

I trained the tiny neural net on the latest set of reader-submitted Halloween costumes and do I have some costume suggestions for you! https://www.aiweirdness.com/tiny-neural-net-halloween-costumes-are-the-best/

Wow, up to 8280 submitted costumes! This is awesome! Getting the training data u

Wow, up to 8280 submitted costumes! This is awesome! Getting the training data up to date with "Portland Inflatable Frog" and "Business to Business Software as a Service" as well as a few kpop demon hunter costumes. I'll train on the new data in a day or two! https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeZDZVL9r_0JbVsN4xVpv3IG5zHHorkFyqYX1yRXvLs-MiaQA/viewform

So you need a fresh costume idea. Don't ask chatgpt! no what you need is one of

So you need a fresh costume idea. Don't ask chatgpt! no what you need is one of these costumes tiny neural net running on my laptop, trained on user-submitted halloween costumes best quality costumes guaranteed https://www.aiweirdness.com/halloween-costumes-by-tiny-neural-net/

@blog Okay actually if you click on the @blog then I think you can follow it dir

@blog Okay actually if you click on the @blog then I think you can follow it directly like that. Maybe it'll show up in search later?

Supposedly you can follow the AI Weirdness blog directly from Mastodon at this h

Supposedly you can follow the AI Weirdness blog directly from Mastodon at this handle: @blog I haven't been able to find it in search but maybe there's a delay or I have to post something first

ha thanks you three, it's working!

ha thanks you three, it's working!

Okay aiweirdness.com appears to be back up in Ghost 6.0 and I have a nice shiny

Okay aiweirdness.com appears to be back up in Ghost 6.0 and I have a nice shiny new analytics page so it would be great if you could visit the site and click on several things so I can see if the numbers go up! (And tell me if anything seems obviously broken)

aiweirdness.com is going to be down for (hopefully) like one minute so I can upd

aiweirdness.com is going to be down for (hopefully) like one minute so I can update the site to Ghost 6.0. Apparently Ghost 6.0 will let you directly follow aiweirdness and interact with it from mastodon? Will investigate.

PSA: there is an #optics technician shortage - if you know anyone who is looking

PSA: there is an #optics technician shortage - if you know anyone who is looking at career options, tell them to consider learning to Dennis https://spie.org/news/photonics-focus/sept-oct-2025/solving-optics-technician-shortage

Presenting #Botober2025, a series of the worst art prompts that literally only o

Presenting #Botober2025, a series of the worst art prompts that literally only one person in the world asked for. The art prompts are AI generated but not even by a GOOD AI, by a tiny bargain basement neural network code from 2015. It runs not on a giant datacenter but on a single laptop covered in cat hair. And it hasn’t seen the entire internet, just one set of user-submitted vintage jello recip

The terminal B Tattered Cover at Denver Airport has six signed copies of You Loo

The terminal B Tattered Cover at Denver Airport has six signed copies of You Look Like a Thing and I Love You!

New AIWeirdness post: ChatGPT will apologize for anything, including stuff that

New AIWeirdness post: ChatGPT will apologize for anything, including stuff that didn't happen. It's not reflecting on stuff it did wrong, it's improv. https://www.aiweirdness.com/chatgpt-will-apologize-for-anything/

no problems ever with mimmic software packige Can trust yes

no problems ever with mimmic software packige Can trust yes