#barkaan

[viscanpikamine]

Low quality pre clone wars Bardan/Akaan sketch, posting for the three ppl who care i love yall

Set right when Akaan got knighted, a year before the war

[aiweirdness]

Star Wars planet names generated by neural network

Neural networks are a kind of machine learning computer program that are very, very good at making their own internal rules about a dataset. If you give them a list of ANYTHING, they’ll figure out how to generate more stuff like it.

This makes neural networks very good at naming things - they can figure out what letter combinations and sounds make a word sound like a name for a kitten, or a paint color, or a Pokemon, or a D&D spell, or a guinea pig, or a metal band, or even a scary guinea pig.

There are almost 3,500 exoplanets confirmed to date and thousands more candidates waiting for confirmation, all with names like ��Kepler-452b” and “55 Cnc-c” and “2MASS J01225093-2439505b”. Clearly, these names are not going to work if we have to one day shout them to the ship’s engineer during a raging ion storm.

Fortunately for the future of space travel, blog reader Chris Jones has sent me a list of almost 700 Star Wars planets. And in short order, the neural network was producing this:

Bartan Cenron Nalarar Bondal Ballor Van-Karal Valtane Vantos Malalas Mateot Tiris Kanan Montaan Tardor Nananon Moridia Tatloor

This is unedited output directly from the neural network, and I had to check to make sure that none of these names were in the original list - they’re just that plausible.

At a higher creativity (more random) setting, the names are a bit less pronounceable on average, but still could pass for Star Wars planets:

La Vok Slorru G Sakani Vaszalu Varkena Baro IV Toran Hatnlant Uluunna Baroa Tina Duperda Bantak Barkaan Ban Beraou Baxuor Rrarar

That’s not to say there weren’t strange results. 

Birdanan Boldura Balmara Barmen Garden Carton Loner Robes Sara Loon Laser Bunlalavor Bal Panda

This stems partly from the fact that the neural network has no idea what English words are - all it knows is Star Wars planet names, and so sometimes it ventures unknowingly into territory where the English language has gone before. There aren’t nearly as many of these accidental words as in other datasets, perhaps partly because these planets were designed to NOT sound like English.

I wanted to learn more about some of these planets, so I turned to two procedural programs. Unlike neural networks, in procedural generators human programmers make the rules rather than the neural network inventing its own. The only outputs you’ll get are those that the human programmer thought of building in, but this can still produce a huge range of interesting results.

I used the Twitter bot @I_find_planets by Charles Bergquist to generate descriptions of the planets, and the procedural planet generator by wwwtyro to generate the pictures.

Will we ever run out of neural network planet names? Sure, because there’s only a limited number of ways that characters can be combined into words before we’re back to indistinguishable mishmashes of letters and numbers. But in the meantime, the neural network could help us make our solar neighborhood a more pronounceable place.

[viscanpikamine]

10 people i’d like to know better

Tagged by @arliganzey and @verpineshatterrifle (answering very late yall didnt see that)

Last song : i just drew some Barkaan art so ofc their very own theme song Merry Christmas Please Don’t Call by Bleachers

Fav colour : pink!! Any kind really but i like the more pastel or light ones <3

Last book : technically last one would be a law textbook but it’s boring, so last non college related book would probably be Dooku Jedi Lost (reread) or Legacy of the Force (rereading slowly for the first time in years)

Last movie : recently watch Everything Everywhere All At Once for the first time! What a beautiful movie, had me sobbing 10/10 would recommend

Last TV show : Squid Games! Watched season 2 and then rewatched season 1, watching in order is for losers

Sweet/spicy/savory: probably savory?

Relationship status : In love with my amazing girlfriend @sugaarquoted <3

Last thing googled : looked at cd players for my bday :3

Looking forward to : seeing my uncle and cousin tomorrow! They live on the other side of France and i’m taking the train down, so excited !!!!

Current obsession : same ones as the past few years i fear, so TTRPGs (spent too long on PathfinderWiki and Pathbuilder these past few weeks), Repcomm and Fallout

Tagging : aaaaa i never know who to tag in theseeeeee @sugaarquoted @auxxrat @sadcena @mandalorian-general @mutilatemyheart (yeah thats 10 i can count)

[sugaarquoted]

I TOO AM ONE OF THE THREE PEOPLE AAAAAA

Low quality pre clone wars Bardan/Akaan sketch, posting for the three ppl who care i love yall

Set right when Akaan got knighted, a year before the war

[arliganzey]

I AM ONE OF THE THREE PEOPLE!!!

Low quality pre clone wars Bardan/Akaan sketch, posting for the three ppl who care i love yall

Set right when Akaan got knighted, a year before the war