An outlet for actually random ideas — experiments, rabbit holes, and things that seemed like a good idea at 2am.
How to make AI sound less like AI
I use AI to help write ActuallyRandom.com. Quite a lot, in fact. I am not ashamed of this. The whole point of the site is to give me somewhere to put random ideas and experiment with AI, SEO, ads and whatever else catches my attention. The bat article began with something my wife heard on Russian TikTok. The Adrien Brody article began because she was watching Chapelwaite after we ate Thai food. Those ideas came from us. AI helped me research them and turn them into articles. ...
Does Adrien Brody Eat Thai Food?
Yes, Adrien Brody eats Thai food. He has said so directly, on the record. This was not a question I expected to be able to answer with evidence. Why I wanted to know My wife was watching Chapelwaite, the gothic horror series in which Adrien Brody plays Captain Charles Boone. We had just eaten Thai food for lunch: tom yum soup, chicken fried rice and panang curry. At some point, for no useful reason, a question appeared in my head: ...
Are Bats Good at Echolocation, or Do They Just Heal Fast?
My wife told me an amazing fact she had picked up from a Russian account on TikTok. For years, the story goes, scientists believed bats were extremely good at echolocation. That was how they flew around dark caves without constantly hitting the walls. Then one scientist X-rayed a batch of bats and found that many of them carried multiple healed fractures. Bats were not brilliant navigators after all. They were terrible at echolocation, crashing into things and breaking bones the whole time. They were just extraordinarily good at healing. ...
The Most Random Posts on madebynathan.com
I started madebynathan.com in 2010 as a technical blog. Programming, electronics, hardware projects, the usual maker stuff. For about fifteen years that’s mostly what it was. Then at some point I stopped filtering. I started posting about whatever rabbit hole I fell down that week: simulation theory, wargaming history, the etymology of “Cossack”. Chasing random curiosities turns out to be a lot of fun, and AI gives me superpowers here. I can go from “wait, is Prussia just Russia with a P?” to a properly researched deep dive in an afternoon. ...
Hello, World
Welcome to Actually Random. This blog is exactly what it sounds like: an outlet for random ideas, experiments, and rabbit holes. Some posts will be deeply researched, some will be half-baked, and that’s the point. More soon.