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    Words that do Handstands

    (hardmath123.github.io)
    324 points hardmath123 | 54 comments | 28 Aug 19 14:22 UTC | HN request time: 1.861s | source | bottom
    1. jwineinger ◴[28 Aug 19 14:50 UTC] No.20820337[source]▶
    The Princess Bride disc cover has one -- https://i.imgur.com/CdxyMd9.jpg
    replies(1): >>20820453 #
    2. alexmlamb ◴[28 Aug 19 14:57 UTC] No.20820421[source]▶
    One idea: try using adversarial training (i.e. train the classifier on examples with bounded perturbations which maximize error).
    3. GimbalLock ◴[28 Aug 19 15:01 UTC] No.20820453[source]▶
    The “e” in “Bride” is absolutely masterful.
    replies(2): >>20820643 #>>20829898 #
    4. xamuel ◴[28 Aug 19 15:09 UTC] No.20820531[source]▶
    The approach here is unnecessarily constrained because the author is seeking glyphs in advance for all two-letter pairs, "one size fits all", so it's unsurprising that the results are rather ugly and hard to read. If the font were allowed to depend on the desired words, that would add flexibility which might allow automatic production of much prettier solutions such as the artistic "earth air fire water" example (or jwineinger's Princess Bride example)
    replies(2): >>20820713 #>>20820861 #
    5. LeifCarrotson ◴[28 Aug 19 15:19 UTC] No.20820643{3}[source]▶
    It also shows that OP's brute force approach is overly constricting - the stylized P forms both d and e upside down.

    Still in awe of the artist who came up with that one.

    6. Jun8 ◴[28 Aug 19 15:24 UTC] No.20820686[source]▶
    If you’re into general wordplay I highly recommend Making the Alphabet Dance.
    7. doomrobo ◴[28 Aug 19 15:26 UTC] No.20820713[source]▶
    It would also make the search space exponentially bigger
    replies(2): >>20820777 #>>20820941 #
    8. Scarblac ◴[28 Aug 19 15:26 UTC] No.20820722[source]▶
    Reminded me of this drawing of the alphabet: https://images.app.goo.gl/3pR7TQqohUDqM3hf8

    It's not the same, but it's left-right symmetrical instead and really neat.

    replies(1): >>20821954 #
    9. toxik ◴[28 Aug 19 15:31 UTC] No.20820777{3}[source]▶
    Well gosh darn it we didn’t invent GPUs just to mine bitcoins!
    replies(2): >>20824012 #>>20824208 #
    10. w-m ◴[28 Aug 19 15:38 UTC] No.20820861[source]▶
    The introductory "earth air fire water" example even shows the issue with using 1-to-1 pairs, as the two-letter group `th` becomes a single `w` in the ambigram.
    11. yorwba ◴[28 Aug 19 15:45 UTC] No.20820927[source]▶
    The text is very faint in many places, so I applied some thresholding in GIMP to make it crisper: https://i.imgur.com/cpC3PK9.png

    There's probably a way to adapt the training process to create black and white images directly, e.g. by evaluating the classifiers on the thresholded images, but passing the gradients through to the underlying continuously-valued images.

    replies(1): >>20820976 #
    12. kthejoker2 ◴[28 Aug 19 15:47 UTC] No.20820941{3}[source]▶
    At a minimum you could include all 2-character combos? Or even just a common subset, maybe the top 100 or those appearing in 1%+ of the OED. And MNIST itself is kind of limiting since no one was trying to write numbers "artistically".
    13. vectorEQ ◴[28 Aug 19 15:50 UTC] No.20820976[source]▶
    that is actually much nicer on the eyes. nice one.
    14. lukeholder ◴[28 Aug 19 15:52 UTC] No.20820989[source]▶
    NOW NO SWIMS ON MON
    replies(1): >>20827017 #
    15. kjhughes ◴[28 Aug 19 16:06 UTC] No.20821086[source]▶
    I've always admired Sun Microsystem's ambigram logo:

    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d5/SUN_micr...

    replies(2): >>20821111 #>>20821572 #
    16. koliber ◴[28 Aug 19 16:09 UTC] No.20821111[source]▶
    I'm a fan of SONOS's logo: https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-Px2Steg_XRM/AAAAAAAAAAI/A...
    replies(4): >>20822056 #>>20822906 #>>20824027 #>>20824167 #
    17. rom1v ◴[28 Aug 19 16:20 UTC] No.20821221[source]▶
    In "Gare du Nord" in Paris: http://www.patricehamel.org/index.php?page=2&article=23

    entrée / sortie (entrance / exit)

    replies(1): >>20823845 #
    18. gao8a ◴[28 Aug 19 16:30 UTC] No.20821338[source]▶
    Sweet, love this tattoo generator! ;)
    19. gumby ◴[28 Aug 19 16:54 UTC] No.20821572[source]▶
    Designed by Vaughn Pratt!
    20. andrewla ◴[28 Aug 19 16:58 UTC] No.20821620[source]▶
    The author here used the MNIST set of handwritten numbers, but that seems an unnecessary constraint. An infinite (practically) training set is available in the form of existing fonts, which can be used to generate a training set. A set of distortions can be added in automatically to give the net a little more information to work with, and then this same methodology can be applied to generate the single glyph ambigrams.

    bigram<->character ambigrams are also feasible, but the search space gets pretty big.

    21. gumby ◴[28 Aug 19 17:00 UTC] No.20821641[source]▶
    This is interesting due to the tight constraints of the roman alphabet

    Islamic writing in the Arabic script has made use of these tricks for centuries as its script has built-in affordances for it.

    22. k_vi ◴[28 Aug 19 17:12 UTC] No.20821781[source]▶
    http://www.johnlangdon.net/works/angels-demons/
    23. garaetjjte ◴[28 Aug 19 17:15 UTC] No.20821815[source]▶
    I can't read at all what is written on first image. I guess I couldn't on generated images either, but with captions they are barely recognizable.
    24. ◴[28 Aug 19 17:20 UTC] No.20821869[source]▶
    25. mcphage ◴[28 Aug 19 17:22 UTC] No.20821895[source]▶
    The ambigram in Angels and Demons really annoyed me—there it was, and it was very pretty, but the book claimed that "nobody had ever been able to create such a thing". Yet clearly Dan Brown (or an illustrator he hired) could. It took me out of the book some.
    26. duckqlz ◴[28 Aug 19 17:25 UTC] No.20821929[source]▶
    reminds me of:

    https://flipscript.com

    27. covercash ◴[28 Aug 19 17:27 UTC] No.20821954[source]▶
    Open in new tab, that link hijacks the back button in mobile Safari.
    replies(2): >>20822495 #>>20824772 #
    28. kibwen ◴[28 Aug 19 17:29 UTC] No.20821979[source]▶
    > This process lets us “dream” of images representing whichever characters we want.

    Aside, I'm really psyched at the idea that the word "dream" has a chance to become an established term of art here. Do androids dream of electric sheep? Well, it depends on the model you've trained them with, obviously.

    29. kibwen ◴[28 Aug 19 17:36 UTC] No.20822056{3}[source]▶
    It seems almost like cheating to make an ambigram out of a palindrome composed exclusively of rotationally-symmetric characters. :P
    replies(1): >>20826496 #
    30. teddyh ◴[28 Aug 19 17:50 UTC] No.20822198[source]▶
    A lot of ambigrams can be found here:

    http://cerulean.st/ambigram/indexold.html

    replies(1): >>20822405 #
    31. jnbiche ◴[28 Aug 19 18:07 UTC] No.20822373[source]▶
    Any good recommendations for a good, discrete gradient descent tutorial, text or Youtube, assuming only calculus?

    It's one of those things I learned the basics of several years ago and have now forgotten (which frustrates me, but is understandable since I don't use machine learning at work).

    32. dasyatidprime ◴[28 Aug 19 18:12 UTC] No.20822405[source]▶
    At the risk of overexposure, there were also some strange claims made in 2009 whose source seems to have vanished but which I recall being based on a different machine ambigram generator, resulting in Cerulean responding with this 7×7 half-turn rotational ambigram grid (where transposing the matrix flips the images, so that there's 28 distinct images presented in 49 cells): https://ceruleanst.livejournal.com/177992.html?nojs=1
    replies(1): >>20826649 #
    33. tarikozket ◴[28 Aug 19 18:21 UTC] No.20822495{3}[source]▶
    tip: you can press and hold `back button` in mobile safari to see a tab's history as a list.
    34. garaetjjte ◴[28 Aug 19 19:03 UTC] No.20822906{3}[source]▶
    They used to have background which causes interesting effect when scrolling: https://www.theverge.com/2015/1/23/7876777/sonos-sound-wave-...
    35. pmiller2 ◴[28 Aug 19 19:32 UTC] No.20823207[source]▶
    At first, I thought this was going to be about words that are autoantonyms. Here are 25 examples: https://mentalfloss.com/article/57032/25-words-are-their-own...
    36. kingbirdy ◴[28 Aug 19 20:51 UTC] No.20823845[source]▶
    That's not quite the same though - that's legible after reflection, ambigrams are rotations.
    replies(1): >>20823886 #
    37. rom1v ◴[28 Aug 19 20:56 UTC] No.20823886{3}[source]▶
    That's a rotation in 3D ;-)
    replies(1): >>20824908 #
    38. YeGoblynQueenne ◴[28 Aug 19 21:11 UTC] No.20824012{4}[source]▶
    "Exponential" is an anagram for "More processing power won't save you".
    39. ben174 ◴[28 Aug 19 21:13 UTC] No.20824027{3}[source]▶
    The Play 5 has the logo rotated 90 degrees vertically so it looks extra cool.
    40. ◴[28 Aug 19 21:29 UTC] No.20824167{3}[source]▶
    41. J5892 ◴[28 Aug 19 21:33 UTC] No.20824208{4}[source]▶
    Then why does GPU stand for Bitcoin Processing Unit?
    42. markleeville ◴[28 Aug 19 21:34 UTC] No.20824215[source]▶
    In high school I would make these and post them on DeviantArt. Was scrolling the Reddit front page and saw my work tattooed on a man's arm. Shocked, to say the least.

    https://twitter.com/jacknjellify/status/820346345429078016

    43. frankus ◴[28 Aug 19 22:01 UTC] No.20824482[source]▶
    Would be great if someone could come up with a "Pull" sticker that would read "Push" when mirrored.
    44. Scarblac ◴[28 Aug 19 22:36 UTC] No.20824772{3}[source]▶
    Sorry, I was on my phone and I'm not sure what a good way to link a picture from Google Image Search is. If there is any.
    45. gugagore ◴[28 Aug 19 22:55 UTC] No.20824908{4}[source]▶
    No, that's not right. You can't rotate your left hand to look like your right. But they are reflections of each other.
    replies(1): >>20825458 #
    46. radeklew ◴[29 Aug 19 00:18 UTC] No.20825458{5}[source]▶
    But text is already symmetrical along the z axis, so it works.

    Say your hands were 2d, so the backs looked the same as the palms. Now hold your hands so that you're looking at the palms and the fingers are pointing up. Rotate your left hand 180° along the y axis, and it would look like your right.

    replies(1): >>20830893 #
    47. Schmazo ◴[29 Aug 19 00:51 UTC] No.20825642[source]▶
    WOWS IS MOM.

    (WOWS IS MOM standing on her head is a statement, not a question)

    48. Stratoscope ◴[29 Aug 19 02:57 UTC] No.20826286[source]▶
    If you like this, check out Inversions by Scott Kim.

    https://www.google.com/search?q=scott+kim+inversions&tbm=isc...

    The book is out of print, but you can find used copies. It has a Foreword by Douglas Hofstadter and a Backword by Jef Raskin.

    I bought an autographed copy at a computer show in San Francisco on March 21, 1982. The way Scott autographed the books was by inventing and drawing your own personalized inversion on the spot! Mine reads with my first name right side up and my last name if you turn it upside down.

    One clever thing I just noticed: my first name has "ae" in it and my last name has "ea", so that made a natural way to link the inverted names together.

    Needless to say, this is one of my most treasured books. Thanks Scott!

    49. bromuro ◴[29 Aug 19 03:46 UTC] No.20826496{4}[source]▶
    Still, they’ve found it. A lucky coincidence isn’t it.
    50. bazzargh ◴[29 Aug 19 04:19 UTC] No.20826649{3}[source]▶
    you can see the strange claim here: http://web.archive.org/web/20110702084440/http://www.ambigra...

    "The Ambigram deck itself seems impossible at first, and in fact, it would have been impossible just a few years ago. No human being could have designed it alone, even if they possessed several lifetimes to work on the problem."

    which is exactly what Cerulean's page refutes - it's a hand-designed 7x7 grid where each word transforms into each of the other words.

    51. cerberusss ◴[29 Aug 19 05:54 UTC] No.20827017[source]▶
    That's a good one, I like it.
    52. airstrike ◴[29 Aug 19 14:41 UTC] No.20829898{3}[source]▶
    Don't you mean the "P" in "Princess"?
    53. gugagore ◴[29 Aug 19 16:20 UTC] No.20830893{6}[source]▶
    I misinterpreted the comment to mean a 2D reflection is a 3D rotation, in general. Thanks for pointing out the comment was about this specific case.