iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Janelle Shane @janelleshane.com · 3h

Only two hours? A miracle! Had a colleague who when asked in those circumstances “what was wrong with the laser?” would say “it’s very complicated and you wouldn’t understand” and we all understood what it meant

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Janelle Shane @janelleshane.com · 3h

Oh interesting!! I didn’t even think of checking other horse databases. Only jockey club was in the training data so the neural net must have arrived at them independently

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Janelle Shane @janelleshane.com · 3h

Yeah I would never get something like this. If the laser is strong enough to zap mosquitoes then it’s strong enough to damage eyes. I wouldn’t trust their “AI vision”, even with lidar, not to make a life-altering mistake

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Janelle Shane @janelleshane.com · 14h

Congratulations! Ever aligned a laser? It seems like you might enjoy that too!

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Janelle Shane @janelleshane.com · 18h

#botober2026 is back by popular demand! This year I used 2015-era char-rnn running on my cat hair covered laptop to predict new entries in a list of 42,000 Jockey Club racehorse names. No other training data was involved. I collected the best horseys for you! www.aiweirdness.com/botober-2026/

Botober 2026
Art prompts generated by a very tiny language model
Trained on 42,000 racehorse names from the Jockey Club

1. Happy Fly
2. Excessive Wet
3. Dust of the Dancer
4. Star You Chase
5. Cat to Cow
6. Rocks of the Wind
7. Expected Shoes
8. Shot Lazer
9. Buttermade
10. Tiger Tricks
11. Bubble Bird
12. Swinging Bedchin
13. Stamp Market
14. Fast Wave
15. Qualitydance
16. Lady Attackpot
17. Speed Puddin
18. Pretty Blubinddem
19. Friend Velvet
20. One Little Bench
21. Hoot Cop
22. Foolish Reserve
23. Boo's Clever
24. Power Noping
25. Silent Got the Cart
26. Thunder Swan
27. Gator Exchange
28. Kitten Market
29. Funny Empire
30. Four Spies
31. Candy Smoke

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Janelle Shane @janelleshane.com · 30/09/2026

I got an early copy of Children of Owl by @littlebadger.bsky.social and I can’t put it down. The desert landscape is so vivid and Maisie just will not quit (complimentary). I also didn’t know the occasional illustrations are graphic novel style which is extra fun! Highly recommend.

Cover of Children of Owl by Darcie Little Badger, with a Kirkus star and a review from kirkus saying “a magical story that both haunts and enchants”. Release date Oct 6 2026

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Janelle Shane @janelleshane.com · 29/09/2026

It has to be #halite for #MinCup26 ! You can make a laser out of salt droplets - place them on a superhydrophobic surface and the droplets are round and stable, making good laser cavities. web.archive.org/web/20111018...

Fig. 1 of the linked paper, showing the experimental setup, along with the broad-spectrum glow of the droplet, and the narrow spike of the laser spectrum. In the experimental setup you'll note that it took two lasers (a green one and an infrared one) to get red laser light out of the salt droplet.

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I feel like I'll finally be a real writer once I learn how to type all the em-dashes.

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Oh wow geez wonder what tipped them off

By popular demand I am doing it!! Just as soon as I pick a dataset

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The vast majority of laser pointers are overpowered and their labels are lying. Not liking FM's chances here. RIP Amazon Bullshit Laser Pointer

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I really wish I’d hired Native Plant Guy when he was working in Colorado - he does such beautiful work!

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Lasers! When you really don’t want to touch a bear

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While #Quartz can make valuable laser components, #skutterudite can make a laser into powerful pulses, according to 2018 paper "Femtosecond mode-locking of a fiber laser using a CoSb3-skutterudite-based saturable absorber". #skutterudite has the edge.

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Folks, when you bring a laser to a job interview, do NOT bring one that has a poorly aligned crystal. It’s just not bright.

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Interesting! Looking into these garnets, I would classify them as Too Specific. To be the most interesting laser materials they'd ideally have some rare earth elements mixed in there, such as erbium or neodymium and especially yttrium. OG (Original Garnet) leaves this possibility open!

Reposted by Janelle Shane

After making my definitive laser-based ranking of Steven Universe gems, I have one question: Is writer Rebecca Sugar into lasers? Because if not, it's a helluva coincidence. www.aiweirdness.com/do-they-even...

Do they even lase? Definitive ranking of Steven Universe gems by a laser scientist

Do they even lase? A laser scientist ranks Steven Universe characters, from D-tier all the way to S-tier, and proposes a few more characters and fusions.

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I write more stuff like this on my blog, and you can sign up for it as a newsletter for it to be emailed directly to you. You can even become a supporter to get bonus material and help me pay my blog bill! www.aiweirdness.com/do-they-even...

Do they even lase? Definitive ranking of Steven Universe gems by a laser scientist

Do they even lase? A laser scientist ranks Steven Universe characters, from D-tier all the way to S-tier, and proposes a few more characters and fusions.

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These are your S-tier Steven Universe laser gems. Given that they're such closely related characters, my firm headcanon is that writer Rebecca Sugar loves lasers and did this on purpose.

S-tier laser gems - legendary lasers. Ruby, sapphire, garnet, and alexandrite

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It gets better. Garnet combines with Amethyst and Pearl to make a giant being that happens to be another great laser crystal. Alexandrite can emit high-energy pulses of infrared laser light, used in laser hair removal.

Alexandrite, with her multiple mouths, six arms, and huge hair, is a force to be reckoned with. She's shown next to a medical-grade laser with lots of glowing blue lights and hoses and articulated arms.

Right image: an alexandrite laser system for hair removal. System shown is from Perfectlaser.

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Combined, the laser power duo Ruby and Sapphire turn into another god-tier laser gem, Garnet. In fact, garnets in various forms can make intense pulsed lasers of all colors. They're used in dentistry, hair removal, research, and more. Garnet's even wearing laser goggles!

The character Garnet raises her impressive glowing hands, while surrounded by six red laser beams. Right: A photo of an Nd:YAG laser (neodymium doped yttrium aluminum garnet) in a research lab. Much of the laser is glowing white because of the weird ceramic reflectors they were using. Unusual but very cool looking.

Right image: Figure 3 from 2012 conference paper "Development of 490 W average power long pulse Nd:YAG laser based on diffuse ceramic reflectors".

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Next S-tier is: Sapphire. Some of the most advanced lasers are made of sapphire. Medical and research lasers made of titanium sapphire make pulses of light so intense that during the brief period of time they exist, they carry more power than the world's power plants combined.

Image on the right is a real titanium sapphire crystal in the giant ZEUS laser at the University of Michigan. Unlike many sapphires, titanium sapphire crystals are pink, and they emit infrared light. Photo by Marcin Szczepanski

Left: Sapphire looking fierce, surrounded by red laser beams. Right: the inside of a laser, viewed through a giant titanium sapphire crystal. The laser appears to be off, but there are cool blue reflections from somewhere, and the crystal is a lovely magenta color.

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Now we have the S-tier lasers. These are legendary laser materials. Let's start with: Ruby. The first visible laser was made of ruby. The laser that was menacing James Bond? Ruby. Emitting a gorgeous red laser beam and still useful for certain hair-removal procedures, Ruby is top-tier.

Left: Garnet (the character) looking triumphant and strong while surrounded by red laser beams. Right: James Bond being threatened with a red laser in the movie Goldfinger.

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I had to propose a new fusion to get the second A-tier material. Bismuth is so opaque that you would expect her to be D-tier. But if she's distributed throughout glass fibers, she can help turn them into infrared fiber lasers. So far they're not common, but watch this space!

The bismuth character, colored in greens and desert tones, with an extra set of eyes indicating she's a fusion. Her head is on the end of a long green body (mostly out of view). To the right is a research article from 2024 titled "Supermode lasing and light amplification in multicore bismuth-doped fiber"

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People have made lasers from diamond, though they're still not very common. With their excellent thermal conductivity, the diamonds might one day make powerful lasers.

Silhouettes of white, yellow, blue, and pink diamond characters, shown next to a 2024 article "Unlocking the power: how crystal size transforms diamond lasers".

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Now we have our A-tier lasers. They're unquestionably laser material, and they are promising as lasers. Even if they're only in research labs so far, they have the potential to be more than scientific curiosities.

A-Tier laser gems. Decent laser materials! Diamond, Bismuth/Desert Glass fusion

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Similarly to Pearl alone, opal is cloudy but made of regular microstructures that can help make a laser cavity. Like with Pearl, you'd have to soak her with dye and energize her with another laser, but you might get some laser light out.

Opal, with her six arms and dual-wielded weapons, hovers majestically above the ground. On the right is a 2008 paper called "Tunable single-mode photonic lasing from zirconia inverse opal photonic crystals"

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This is a surprise answer. With Pearl's cloudiness you would think she would be D-tier, but she has a regular microstructure (from all that time being built layer by layer inside a mollusk) that can help form a laser cavity if you form her into a flat sheet and soak her with fluorescent dye.

Pearl looking serene next to an extremely busy figure from a laser paper with literally 22 subfigures and 5 more sub-sub-figures. It shows that they got weak yellow laser light out.

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One of the first laser crystals was fluorite with uranium added! It didn't work very well, plus, uranium. Fluorite is hardly ever used for lasers anymore, but it can be made into laser components like lenses and windows.

Fluorite, the many-eyed, many-gemmed Steven Universe character, with a 1962 paper from Physical Review Letters about using uranium doped fluorite in masers (and optical masers, which are now called masers).

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I found a couple of papers from the 1980s that made lasers from emerald, but they must not have been very good ones because I've found nothing since.

Emerald (the character from Steven Universe) looking vaguely excited. On the right is a 1987 paper titled "Highly Efficient Emerald Laser".

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Spinel barely makes the cut as a laser material. A couple of papers over the years have looked into spinel as a laser material and shown some promising properties. The fact that they didn't follow with more papers or lasers probably means that spinel was a pain to work with For Some Reason.

Spinel (from Steven Universe) looking triumphant. Next to her is the title and abstract of a 2006 paper "Potential candidate for new tunable solid-state laser between 1 and 2 micrometers: Ni 2+ -doped MgAl2O4 spinel grown by the micro-pulling-down-method.

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The B-tier gems may not be the most popular laser materials, but at least some researchers have made lasers out of them. They're clear enough not to kill a growing laser beam, and they have some ability to do stimulated emission, or at least form a laser cavity for some other material.

B-Tier Laser Gems. Someone, somewhere, has made them into lasers. Spinel, Emerald, Fluorite, Pearl, Opal

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Laser materials also need to be able to store energy and release it later as identical copies of light that hits it. (This ability is called stimulated emission, and it's the SE in LASER.) I don't know of anyone who's made lasers out of the C-tier gems, so likely they're bad at stimulated emission.

C-tier laser gems. Unlikely. Rose Quartz, Amethyst, Peridot, Aquamarine, Topaz, Zircon, Rutile, Sunstone, Tourmaline, Bixbite, Albite, Titanite, Cherry Quartz, Angel Aura Quartz

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First off, here's the thing about laser materials: light has to be able to travel through them. If it's cloudy or opaque, there's no way for light to survive and get stronger inside the gem. Our D-tier gems will destroy a laser before it even gets going.

D-tier laser gems. Sorry, no. Lapis Lazuli Jasper Agate Snowflake Obsidian Obsidian Larimar Tiger's eye Serpentine Flint Chert Nephrite Jade Sardonyx Carnelian Pebbles Sugulite Malachite Rhodonite Azurite Spodumene Moonstone Chalcedony Desert glass Crysocolla

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Do they even lase? Definitive ranking of Steven Universe gems by a laser scientist

Do they even lase? A laser scientist ranks Steven Universe characters, from D-tier all the way to S-tier, and proposes a few more characters and fusions.

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Janelle Shane @janelleshane.com · 24/09/2026

Never experienced so many swift mood changes in a seven-second intro theme

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Janelle Shane @janelleshane.com · 23/09/2026

I read a paper where they used a salt window as the exit window for a laser whose lasing medium was gin though they didn’t explain how they protected it from dissolving

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Janelle Shane @janelleshane.com · 23/09/2026

Voting #halite because you can make it into laser-quality optical windows. Although the product page does note that they dissolve in water

Product listing on Edmund Optics for sodium chloride windows. Product photo is highly clear round windows with a purplish blue sheen. Excellent transmission from 250nm - 16 um. Low cost. Ideal for FTIR spectroscopy

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Reposted by Janelle Shane

K.B. Wagers @kbwagers.com · 23/09/2026

Hi Colorado peeps! Did you know there are multiple terrible ballot measures on the docket for November, but especially two anti-trans measures that need you to VOTE NO on. No on 134 - bullshit anti-trans sports ban No on 135 - bullshit anti-trans medical ban

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Janelle Shane @janelleshane.com · 21/09/2026

Did you know I have a blog/newsletter you can sign up for? It's got cartoons and science (mostly lasers these days). You can even become a supporter to get occasional secret content and to help me pay my blog bill. www.aiweirdness.com/thasers-in-c...

The lasers in Clash of the Titans

They used lasers for the god rays of Zeus in Clash of the Titans (1981) and I don't care what you say about the rest of the movie, the lasers are doing great.

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Reposted by Janelle Shane

Jer Thorp @jerthorp.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Friends! Can I ask you a favour? My 🐦 + 📊 course starts next week. I'm super excited but registration is worryingly low. Can you share this with your weirdo nature + art + code friends? jerthorp.me/learning

jerthorp.me

LEARNING | jerthorp

Online courses and wokshops about birds, data and creative coding. Binoculars to Binomials is for coders who are interested in cultivating an observational practice, and for birders who want to dive ...

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Janelle Shane @janelleshane.com · 16/09/2026

This @escapepod.org story was so good! Could have taken place in the Murderbot universe, and Murderbot and Station would have gotten along

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Janelle Shane @janelleshane.com · 15/09/2026

I want everything from that store! I already have a few things but clearly I need more

Janelle Shane @janelleshane.com · 15/09/2026

Laser-making scrap material turned into gems? A+ recycling concept, precision targeted to appeal to me www.aiweirdness.com/laser-gems/