I got dibs on Snox Boops
June 29, 2017 12:49 PM   Subscribe

This post was deleted for the following reason: Poster's Request -- taz



 
My son and his fiance got a kitten. They struggled to come up with a name. They decided to just start saying names and random words to it and see if it responded strongly to anything. And, after a few words thrown its way, the kitten suddenly turned and looked right at my son after uttering a word.

Spoons.

So, they rolled with it. Kitten is now Spoons Magoo. (They added Magoo without the kitten's input. I have no idea why.)
posted by Thorzdad at 12:59 PM on June 29, 2017 [7 favorites]


"Tygrar" is a great cat name. So is "Grim Wynne".

Maybe we could hyphenate our cat, Dr. Cat. Dr. Cat-Tygrar, DDS, PhD.
posted by Frowner at 1:01 PM on June 29, 2017 [2 favorites]


Also, not much has really made me laugh since last November, and this did. An echo from a kinder world!
posted by Frowner at 1:05 PM on June 29, 2017 [5 favorites]


Big Wiggy Bool.

That is all.
posted by Faint of Butt at 1:08 PM on June 29, 2017 [5 favorites]


Two days left in Pride month, "Hunty" all the way.
posted by wreckingball at 1:12 PM on June 29, 2017 [1 favorite]


With the help of my then-six-year-old niece, my cat was graced with Captain Rufus T. Smushyface of the Space Patrol. So we're good, thanks.
posted by Quindar Beep at 1:16 PM on June 29, 2017 [4 favorites]


"Torg?" is also the sound a cat makes when something has disrupted their sleep, but maybe it is something delicious so it's okay.
posted by thefang at 1:17 PM on June 29, 2017 [5 favorites]


And "Hurker" is definitely a description too, not a name.
posted by Quindar Beep at 1:18 PM on June 29, 2017 [3 favorites]


We named our cat Paper Mill to spite someone who thought that no one associated paper mills with the state of Maine. It's the polar opposite of cold machine logic, but I think the end result is fairly similar.
posted by Ferreous at 1:25 PM on June 29, 2017 [3 favorites]


SONNEY MROW

Can this guy train his algorithm for scruffy-ass dogs? We're in the ballpark but not quite there.
posted by middleclasstool at 1:32 PM on June 29, 2017 [1 favorite]


"Liony Oli" looks weird, but if you say it as Leon-E-Oly it's not bad! And if you're calling your little scruff from far away (like that works) you can stretch out the O - LeoneOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOly.
posted by achrise at 1:33 PM on June 29, 2017 [2 favorites]


Why is Pope only a backup name? My cat would make a great pope. Just look how she pulls off a dramatic hat.

I <3 every post about neural networks. They make me laugh uncontrollably and like Frowner, I find that so much harder these days.
posted by Emmy Rae at 1:42 PM on June 29, 2017 [2 favorites]


Can this guy train his algorithm

The person behind all of these amazing neural network creations is a woman named Janelle Shane.
posted by Faint of Butt at 1:42 PM on June 29, 2017 [19 favorites]


I have a kitten who will come running, with a happy tail and an excited mew, when I yell out "hi Pants!" She got the name for having having legs a little different color than the rest of her when she was tiny. But now, I'm just glad there's a creature on earth who will respond happily to being called "pants".

Her sister is the Notorious CPG (Calico Pirate Girl), so named because this tortoise shell calico has a black goatee and a black ring around one eye like a patch. Notorious because she's evil about sudden full clawed ambushes.
posted by honestcoyote at 1:49 PM on June 29, 2017 [5 favorites]


Needs a JanelleShane tag - when the robots take over, let the record show I believe she is doing great work for humanity.
posted by Mchelly at 1:54 PM on June 29, 2017 [1 favorite]


The early drafts were really promising from the get-go – "Gatbewl" and "Mrror".

Also an eponysterical post.
posted by Joeruckus at 1:56 PM on June 29, 2017 [1 favorite]


Black cats=Snowball
All other cats=Snookums
Done.
posted by sexyrobot at 2:31 PM on June 29, 2017 [1 favorite]


The person behind all of these amazing neural network creations is a woman named Janelle Shane.

Apologies. Must read more carefully. Thank you for the correction.
posted by middleclasstool at 2:40 PM on June 29, 2017 [2 favorites]


I noticed Poot made it into the list.
posted by msbutah at 2:48 PM on June 29, 2017


I'm very pleased by any cat name that begins with "Mr."

"Dr." and "Prof." are also ok.
posted by GenjiandProust at 3:04 PM on June 29, 2017 [3 favorites]


These are all perfect and incredible but the "Definitely backup choices" like Trickles, Cloobie and Scabbys are my top choices for cat names of the year.
posted by turbid dahlia at 3:09 PM on June 29, 2017


Also (sad hearts) for little Tilly Mapper, I hope she is fully recovered and has found a loving family to care for her forever.
posted by turbid dahlia at 3:10 PM on June 29, 2017 [2 favorites]


Our most recent cat adoption came with the name "Pico", which we felt was not nearly as majestic a name as he deserved. And we'd just completed watching Gravity Falls, and we live in New Mexico which is a majority-latino state, so we ended up settling on "Jesus Pico de Gato Ramirez", or "Soos" for short.
posted by endotoxin at 3:15 PM on June 29, 2017 [1 favorite]


Toby Booch
Mr Whinkles
Licky Cat
Mr Gruffles
Mr Took
Mr Tiggie
Mr. Skuffles
Mr. Hinkles
Mush Jam
Tilly-Mapper

....those are kind of awesome.

I'm very pleased by any cat name that begins with "Mr." "Dr." and "Prof." are also ok.

I swear I read somewhere that at one point Steve Martin had a cat named "Dr. Carlton B. Forbes". And the neighbors across the street when I was a kid had a cat named "Inspector Fuzz" and I thought it was awesome.

....I am remembering, with some embarrassment, that when I was a little girl I would play with a different neighbor's cat a lot, and my six-year-old me's nickname for its footpads were "Puddy-Pooms" which I could totally see popping up in the neural net at some point.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 3:26 PM on June 29, 2017 [4 favorites]


Question for whomever: are neural nets meaningfully different from Markov chains? Is one a subset of the other?

I ask because I've been using a Markov chain site for a name-generating project of my own* and the results I get from that seem awfully similar to the sorts of things Shane gets from neural nets. Something like "Teaw Mos Tilypsronvynkor" would fit right in with the results I get from some settings. Do neural nets and Markov chains just happen to produce similar results using different methods, or are they more closely related than that?

*(hypothetical drag queen stage names. Best one so far has been "Esquirelle," though I have also enjoyed "Penne Pilates Des DuBois" and "Lady Bellionzo.")
posted by Spathe Cadet at 4:19 PM on June 29, 2017 [3 favorites]


("Lady Bellionzo" would of course also probably work fine for certain cats, now that I think about it.)
posted by Spathe Cadet at 4:20 PM on June 29, 2017 [1 favorite]


Spathe Cadet: Neural nets are significantly more complicated/powerful than Markov chains. Probably the simplest way to think about the difference, for this kind of application, is that neural nets have (some) understanding of structure. For example, in Janelle Shane's previous post, she notes:
To avoid overwhelming the other two datasets with the sheer size of the metal band dataset, I selected only band names that began with “Dark”, “Death”, and “Evil”. I interleaved the three datasets line by line, and sat back to watch. It turns out that the neural network was clever enough that it picked up on the pattern, and soon was dutifully producing output that alternated between the genres: “Dark Sender, Fuzzy Butt, Deathnip, Hawkeye, …”
A spectacular example of this is RoboRosewater, which produces (roughly) daily Magic the Gathering cards. At a bare minimum, it needs to understand the structure of a card entry: the name, the mana cost, the type (and possible subtypes), the text, and the power/toughness (assuming it's a creature of some kind). Conversely, when people used Markov chains to make Dominion cards, the chains were producing the card texts, but the names/costs had to be generated independently because the chains had no concept of that kind of structure.
posted by one for the books at 5:02 PM on June 29, 2017 [1 favorite]


So, neural networks are the new 3D printers?
posted by bongo_x at 5:18 PM on June 29, 2017


I ask because I've been using a Markov chain site for a name-generating project of my own* and the results I get from that seem awfully similar to the sorts of things Shane gets from neural nets. Something like "Teaw Mos Tilypsronvynkor" would fit right in with the results I get from some settings. Do neural nets and Markov chains just happen to produce similar results using different methods, or are they more closely related than that?

The implementation is quite different. I believe Shane is using a version of this which, if I understand correctly, produces each bit of text in a fairly low-context way, as do Markov generators - thus longer output can be nonsensical in a somewhat similar way.
posted by atoxyl at 5:35 PM on June 29, 2017 [1 favorite]


if I understand correctly, produces each bit of text in a fairly low-context way, as do Markov generators

Someone could tell me it's misleading to draw these parallels - where I'm coming from is:

- Markov chain generators "predict" the next word in a text (occasionally next characted) based on the probability that it follows the previous word or words as derived from the source text.

- char-rnn is described as predicting one character at a time, but based on a method much more sophisticated than simple weighted randomness.

I'm not 100 percent sure of the extent of the information used to predict each character, though. I think it probably has more context but it does seem to lose the plot on larger outputs.
posted by atoxyl at 5:44 PM on June 29, 2017 [1 favorite]


I think Haldir of the Saleword Barga might actually be an ancestor of mine.

*leafs through Orkneyinga Saga*


Yup.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 7:27 PM on June 29, 2017 [3 favorites]


My understanding is Markov Chains are mere toys and Neural Networks are the harbingers of the coming AI revolution/Singularity.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 8:36 PM on June 29, 2017 [2 favorites]


> soon was dutifully producing output that alternated between the genres: “Dark Sender, Fuzzy Butt, Deathnip, Hawkeye, …”

So, this neural net comes up with cat names no matter the data set, is what I'm seeing?
posted by rtha at 9:07 PM on June 29, 2017 [7 favorites]


One of my favorite things about the Elephant and Piggie series of children's books is that the doctor is a cat and it's name is Dr. Cat.

A coworker today got perky little wise ass orange tabby kitty today. I voted for naming it "Hollywood" but she went with "Kitty Kitty Mow Mow" which is pretty good.
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 9:13 PM on June 29, 2017 [4 favorites]


"Torg?" will have me giggling most of the day. I will suggest that "Pissy" is a perfectly acceptable cat name and deserves better than being on the "definite backup" list.
posted by nubs at 8:06 AM on June 30, 2017 [1 favorite]


I am bored at work (there is nearly no one else here) and I poked elsewhere on the neural net site and came across the author's attempt at generating Doctor Who episode titles.

"The Keds Of Death" has GOT to have been a Tenth Doctor ep.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:34 AM on June 30, 2017 [1 favorite]


Mr. Yetheract

That's Doctor Yetheract if you please.
posted by Foosnark at 9:00 AM on June 30, 2017


I am bored at work (there is nearly no one else here) and I poked elsewhere on the neural net site and came across the author's attempt at generating Doctor Who episode titles.

"PLANET OF FIRE IN SPACE!"
posted by infinitywaltz at 11:05 AM on June 30, 2017 [1 favorite]


and here i thought i was being clever by naming my cat Loaf.

fucking PANS

also POPE. brb i am calling a sham papal conclave to fraudulently elect my cat pope
posted by nixon's meatloaf at 10:25 PM on July 1, 2017 [1 favorite]


« Older China on the Rails   |   A "Comic Sans" for the 21st Century Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments