Content Warning: Some NSFW bot language
I recently trained a Twitter bot with a recurrent neural network (RNN) to tell question-answer jokes. Once in a blue moon, it would say something amusing. But most of the time -- a startlingly high percentage of the time -- it would say something bizarre and offensive. So, I had to kill it.
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@ShowdownBot is a generative Twitter bot using Tracery, built on Glitch.
I recently made a few similar bots with Tracery -- @WordsofMcCarthy and @StinkpieceBot -- with the aid of Cheap Bots, Done Quick. This time around, I wanted to open up the hood, tinker around with the code, and experiment with Glitch as a botmaking platform.
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All the news that's fit to link.
Content Warning: Speculative funnel metrics
Moz’s whiteboard video, “Why Paid Ads Fail”, concludes that most paid ads fail because brands are not known to their audience.
There's no trust, no recognition, and so the cost per click remains high and rising.
I see this dynamic play out at companies of all sizes, all the time, so here are some example campaign metrics to illustrate Rand Fishkin’s point in the 'Why Paid Ads Fail' episode of Whiteboard Friday.
“Hollywood cannot resist the Tetons. If you have seen Western movies, you have seen the Tetons. They have appeared in the background of countless pictures, and must surely be the most tectonically active mountains on film, drifting about, as they will, from Canada to Mexico, and from Kansas nearly to the coast.” - John McPhee, Rising From The Plains
Rising from the Plains not only changed the way I look at the Wyoming landscape, but left with me a certainty that geological awareness is good for you.
'Whistblower’ Christopher Wylie of Cambridge Analytica came forward this week to discuss his firm’s role in creating “Steve Bannon’s psychological warfare tool”. (In the industry, we sometimes call them “advertisements”).
Interestingly, Wylie adapted his PhD work originally geared towards fashion trend forecasting to target millions of US Facebook users with political ads.
The Rider by Tim Krabbe is my most recommended and most gifted book of all time. If the opening words of the novel intrigue you, pick up The Rider and glide along with Krabbe.
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