Research scientist Janelle Shane writes: "I’ve been training a neural network (based on this open-source neural network framework from Andrej Karpathy) on datasets from recipes, to lists of Pokemon, to superhero names. I decided to see if it could invent names for new fruit varieties - I fed it a list of apple, peach, pear, plum, and cherry varieties, and asked it to generate more."

Sunbrown Stanker Pork Gala Horspest Shivercell Hencough Moregall Brown Soften Ruby Wally Ruck Nagtort Blee Red Redcells Zuby Glong Zeelcher Hacker Gala Soften Fuji Klunk 134 Horking Read the rest

"The aim of the wise is not to secure pleasure, but to avoid pain." – Aristotle Read the rest

Despite almost universal agreement that basically defines "so boring as to become disgusting", the Red Delicious apple continues to be the most-grown variety in the US. More than 50,000 bushels of the vile things are turned out every year. This story by Rowan Jacobsen in Mother Jones explains the Red Delicious' undeserved success and follows the stories of entrepreneurs who are trying to bring back varieties of apple long lost to the consumer market. Read the rest