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Shoggoth
A shoggoth (occasionally shaggoth) is a fictional creature in the Cthulhu Mythos. The beings were mentioned in passing in H. P. Lovecraft's sonnet cycle '' Fungi from Yuggoth'' (1929–30), and later mentioned in other works, before being described in detail in his novella '' At the Mountains of Madness'' (1931). Description The definitive descriptions of shoggoths come from the above-quoted story. In it, Lovecraft describes them as massive amoeba-like creatures made out of iridescent black slime, with multiple eyes "floating" on the surface. They are "protoplasmic", lacking any default body shape and instead being able to form limbs and organs at will. A typical shoggoth measures across when a sphere, though the story mentions the existence of others of much greater size. Being amorphous, shoggoths can take on any shape needed, making them very versatile within aquatic environments. Cthulhu Mythos media most commonly portray shoggoths as intelligent to some degree, but deal ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cthulhu Mythos Species
This is a list of fictional creatures from the Cthulhu mythos of American writer H. P. Lovecraft and his collaborators. Byakhee The byakhees or byakhee birds first appeared in Lovecraft's short story " The Festival" and were later featured in August Derleth's tale "The House on Curwen Street." They are the servants of the Great Old One Hastur. Lovecraft provides a description of the byakhees in The Festival: Deep Ones The Deep Ones first appeared in Lovecraft's novella ''The Shadow Over Innsmouth'' (1931), but were already hinted at in the early short story "Dagon". The Deep Ones are a race of intelligent ocean-dwelling creatures, approximately human-shaped but with a fishy appearance. They regularly mate with humans along the coast, creating societies of hybrids. Numerous Mythos elements are associated with the Deep Ones, including the legendary town of Innsmouth, the undersea city of Y'ha-nthlei, the Esoteric Order of Dagon, and the beings known as Father Dagon and Moth ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
At The Mountains Of Madness
''At the Mountains of Madness'' is a science-fiction and cosmic horror novella by the American author H. P. Lovecraft, written in February/March 1931 and published in 1936. Rejected that year by ''Weird Tales'' editor Farnsworth Wright on the grounds of its length, it was originally serialized in the February, March, and April 1936 issues of '' Astounding Stories''. It has been reproduced in numerous collections. The story details the events of a disastrous expedition to Antarctica in September 1930, and what is found there by a group of explorers led by the narrator, Dr. William Dyer of Miskatonic University. Throughout the story, Dyer details a series of previously untold events in the hope of deterring another group of explorers who wish to return to the continent. These events include the discovery of an ancient civilization older than the human race, and realization of Earth's past told through various sculptures and murals. The story was inspired by Lovecraft's inter ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fungi From Yuggoth
''Fungi from Yuggoth'' is a sequence of 36 sonnets by cosmic horror writer H. P. Lovecraft. Most of the sonnets were written between 27 December 1929 – 4 January 1930; thereafter individual sonnets appeared in ''Weird Tales'' and other genre magazines. The sequence was published complete in '' Beyond the Wall of Sleep'' (Sauk City, Wisconsin: Arkham House, 1943, 395–407) and ''The Ancient Track: The Complete Poetical Works of H. P. Lovecraft'' (San Francisco: Night Shade Books, 2001, 64–79; expanded 2nd ed, NY Hippocampus Press, 2013). Ballantine Books’ mass paperback edition, ''Fungi From Yuggoth & Other Poems'' (Random House, New York, 1971) included other poetic works. The sequence has been printed in several different versions as standalone chapbooks. In June 1943, Bill Evans (Washington DC) issued a separate appearance which lacked the final three sonnets. In 1977 Necronomicon Press, (West Warwick, RI) issued the complete sequence as ''The Fungi from Yuggoth'' (4 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Large Language Model
A large language model (LLM) is a language model trained with self-supervised machine learning on a vast amount of text, designed for natural language processing tasks, especially language generation. The largest and most capable LLMs are generative pretrained transformers (GPTs), which are largely used in generative chatbots such as ChatGPT or Gemini. LLMs can be fine-tuned for specific tasks or guided by prompt engineering. These models acquire predictive power regarding syntax, semantics, and ontologies inherent in human language corpora, but they also inherit inaccuracies and biases present in the data they are trained in. History Before the emergence of transformer-based models in 2017, some language models were considered large relative to the computational and data constraints of their time. In the early 1990s, IBM's statistical models pioneered word alignment techniques for machine translation, laying the groundwork for corpus-based language modeling. A sm ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Elder Thing
The Elder Things (also known as the Old Ones and Elder Ones) are fictional extraterrestrials in the Cthulhu Mythos. The beings first appeared in H. P. Lovecraft's novella, ''At the Mountains of Madness'' (published in 1936, but written in 1931), and later appeared, although not named, in the short story " The Dreams in the Witch-House" (1933). Additional references to the Elder Things appear in Lovecraft's short story "The Shadow Out of Time" (1936). Description In the Mythos canon, the Elder Things are the first extraterrestrial species to come to the Earth, colonizing the planet about one billion years ago. They stand roughly eight feet tall and have the appearance of a huge, oval-shaped barrel with starfish-like appendages at both ends. The top appendage is a head adorned with five eyes, five eating tubes, and a set of cilia for "seeing" without light. The bottom appendage was five-limbed and was used for walking and other forms of locomotion. The beings also had five leath ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
ChatGPT
ChatGPT is a generative artificial intelligence chatbot developed by OpenAI and released on November 30, 2022. It uses large language models (LLMs) such as GPT-4o as well as other Multimodal learning, multimodal models to create human-like responses in text, speech, and images. It has access to features such as searching the web, using apps, and running programs. It is credited with accelerating the AI boom, an ongoing period of rapid investment in and public attention to the field of artificial intelligence (AI). Some observers have raised concern about the potential of ChatGPT and similar programs to displace human intelligence, enable plagiarism, or fuel misinformation. ChatGPT is built on OpenAI's proprietary series of generative pre-trained transformer (GPT) models and is Fine-tuning (machine learning), fine-tuned for conversational applications using a combination of supervised learning and reinforcement learning from human feedback. Successive user AI prompt, prompts an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Internet Meme
An Internet meme, or meme (, Help:Pronunciation respelling key, ''MEEM''), is a cultural item (such as an idea, behavior, or style) that spreads across the Internet, primarily through Social media, social media platforms. Internet memes manifest in a variety of formats, including images, videos, GIFs, and other Viral phenomenon, viral content. Newer internet memes are often defined as brain rot. Key characteristics of memes include their tendency to be Parody, parodied, their use of intertextuality, their viral dissemination, and their continual evolution. The term ''meme'' was originally introduced by Richard Dawkins in 1972 to describe the concept of cultural transmission. The term ''Internet meme'' was coined by Mike Godwin in 1993 in reference to the way memes proliferated through early online communities, including message boards, Usenet groups, and email. The emergence of social media platforms such as YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram further diversified memes a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Black Box
In science, computing, and engineering, a black box is a system which can be viewed in terms of its inputs and outputs (or transfer characteristics), without any knowledge of its internal workings. Its implementation is "opaque" (black). The term can be used to refer to many inner workings, such as those of a transistor, an engine, an algorithm, the human brain, or an institution or government. To analyze an open system with a typical "black box approach", only the behavior of the stimulus/response will be accounted for, to infer the (unknown) ''box''. The usual representation of this "black box system" is a data flow diagram centered in the box. The opposite of a black box is a system where the inner components or logic are available for inspection, which is most commonly referred to as a white box (sometimes also known as a "clear box" or a "glass box"). History The modern meaning of the term "black box" seems to have entered the English language around 1945. In electroni ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chatbot
A chatbot (originally chatterbot) is a software application or web interface designed to have textual or spoken conversations. Modern chatbots are typically online and use generative artificial intelligence systems that are capable of maintaining a conversation with a user in natural language and simulating the way a human would behave as a conversational partner. Such chatbots often use deep learning and natural language processing, but simpler chatbots have existed for decades. Although chatbots have existed since the late 1960s, the field gained widespread attention in the early 2020s due to the popularity of OpenAI's ChatGPT, followed by alternatives such as Microsoft's Copilot, DeepSeek and Google's Gemini. Such examples reflect the recent practice of basing such products upon broad foundational large language models, such as GPT-4 or the Gemini language model, that get fine-tuned so as to target specific tasks or applications (i.e., simulating human conversat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cthulhu Mythos
The Cthulhu Mythos is a mythopoeia and a shared fictional universe, originating in the works of American Horror fiction, horror writer H. P. Lovecraft. The term was coined by August Derleth, a contemporary correspondent and protégé of Lovecraft, to identify the settings, tropes, and lore that were employed by Lovecraft and his literary successors. The name "Cthulhu" derives from the central creature in Lovecraft's seminal short story "The Call of Cthulhu", first published in the pulp magazine ''Weird Tales'' in 1928. Richard L. Tierney, a writer who also wrote Mythos tales, later applied the term "Derleth Mythos" to distinguish Lovecraft's works from Derleth's later stories, which modify key tenets of the Mythos. Authors of Lovecraftian horror in particular frequently use elements of the Cthulhu Mythos. History In his essay "H. P. Lovecraft and the Cthulhu Mythos", Robert M. Price described two stages in the development of the Cthulhu Mythos. Price called the first stage the "Cth ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Foundation Model
In artificial intelligence (AI), a foundation model (FM), also known as large X model (LxM), is a machine learning or deep learning model trained on vast datasets so that it can be applied across a wide range of use cases.Competition and Markets Authority (2023). ''AI Foundation Models: Initial Report''. Available at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/65081d3aa41cc300145612c0/Full_report_.pdf Generative AI applications like large language models (LLM) are common examples of foundation models. Building foundation models is often highly resource-intensive, with the most advanced models costing hundreds of millions of dollars to cover the expenses of acquiring, curating, and processing massive datasets, as well as the compute power required for training. These costs stem from the need for sophisticated infrastructure, extended training times, and advanced hardware, such as GPUs. In contrast, adapting an existing foundation model for a specific task or using it directly ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Narrative Of Arthur Gordon Pym Of Nantucket
''The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket'', written and published in 1838, is the only complete novel by the American writer Edgar Allan Poe. The novel is set between 1827 and 1828 and relates the tale of the young Arthur Gordon Pym, who stows away aboard a whaler called the ''Grampus''. Various adventures and misadventures befall Pym, including shipwreck, mutiny, and Human cannibalism, cannibalism, before he is saved by the crew of the ''Jane Guy''. Aboard this vessel, Pym and a sailor named Dirk Peters continue their adventures farther south. Docking on land, they encounter hostile, black-skinned natives before escaping back to the ocean. The novel ends abruptly as Pym and Peters continue toward the South Pole. The story starts out as a fairly conventional adventure at sea, but it becomes increasingly strange and hard to classify. Poe, who intended to present a realistic story, was inspired by several real-life accounts of sea voyages, and drew heavily from J. N. Reyno ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
