Dec 23, 2025
"A ONE-POST RHYME?
DOWNRIGHT UNHEARD!"
FOR EASE OF REBLOGS
SPREAD THE WORD
Burma-Shave
seen from Italy
seen from United States
seen from Mexico
seen from China
seen from Lithuania
seen from United States
seen from Japan
seen from Germany
seen from Russia
seen from Germany
seen from Germany
seen from China
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Singapore
seen from Poland
seen from Germany
seen from Maldives
seen from United States
seen from Maldives
"A ONE-POST RHYME?
DOWNRIGHT UNHEARD!"
FOR EASE OF REBLOGS
SPREAD THE WORD
Burma-Shave
Burma-Shave
May 26th, 2024.
I will always stop for a photo of a Burma-Shave sign.
Old-timey road trip!
If you
Don't know
Whose signs
These are
You can't have
Driven very far
Burma-Shave
Ya-ma-za-ku-ra
I-like-the leaves-that-you-hide
Be-fore-you-blo-ssom
Burma-Shave
I have a favorite series of Burma-Shave signs What does that say about me as a person
A neural net tries writing Burma-Shave jingles
Will machine learning algorithms be writing commercials soon?
A familiar sight on US roads from 1926-1963 were a series of red billboards advertising Burma-Shave. Each billboard would contain a snippet of a jingle, and the last one always read “Burma-Shave”. There were about 600 different messages printed over the years, and Orion Sauter collected them for me to feed to a neural network. Here’s an example of a real one:
I'd heard it praised By drug store clerks I tried the stuff Hot dog! it works Burma-Shave
A neural network is a type of machine learning algorithm that learns to imitate the text it sees. The most effective neural networks - the ones that deliver ads or manage finances or translate languages - usually have huge datasets to learn from. 600 Burma-Shave jingles is a pitifully small dataset, as it turns out. I tried two different neural network frameworks: a character-level rnn from Google’s Seedbank (which you can try yourself in the browser without any coding or GPU required) and a much harder-to-install torch-based rnn that uses syllables as its building blocks.
Both, um, struggled.
Syllable-rnn:
shavery more tube look still wrong in's brush the is burma-shave
Character-rnn:
The cream That's in it The cream One hears The last strong Burma-Shave
Rhymes were usually missing. They were full of bizarre non-sequiturs. They did, at least, always remember to end with “Burma-Shave”.
Syllable-rnn:
with's the cow man mike to they day his not her shave burma-shave
the chin a what you's span your toast burma-shave
Character-rnn:
If hangers With a have With the hair What hat hoop Burma-Shave
At every substitute It's a good Old Sastadong Half a pound For face the place Where they don't sell Burma-Shave
Occasionally a rhyme would appear, likely by accident.
Syllable-rnn:
no more dust the chap in car for any lone now shave behind can's a bazaar they zor these mile burma-shave
Character-rnn:
The cream That's a gift He's a wolf With hair On the lith Burma-Shave
The future of advertising, ladies and gentlemen.
Syllable-rnn:
if you have gone sky lady burma-shave
you you think you brush no dob you'll to brush is forced to beard burma-shave
Character-rnn:
Best car The ladies Take it Their face In your chin Burma-Shave
His beard So dar It spreads To cranch In the raam Burma-Shave
When you should Whiskers Scratchy chin Who will Save your dripply pound For a fart The rough Who signs To razor can Burma-Shave
It learns It writes But do not fret AI can’t take Your ad job yet Burma-Shave
Support AI Weirdness and get more catchy Burma-Shave slogans (and other bonus content. The original Burma-Shave slogans were all most definitely G-rated, but for some reason, some of these aren’t.
Theorising that one could time travel within his own lifetime, Doctor Sam Beckett stepped into the Quantum Leap accelerator and vanished... He woke to find himself trapped in the past, facing mirror images that were not his own, and driven by an unknown force to change history for the better. His only guide on this journey is Al, an observer from his own time, who appears in the form of a hologram that only Sam can see and hear. And so Doctor Beckett finds himself leaping from life to life, striving to put right what once went wrong, and hoping each time that his next leap will be the leap home
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Burma-Shave