Category: facebook

Joaquin Sorolla | May 30 2024, 22:42

Another very cool artist whom I cannot fail to mention in my collection is Joaquin Sorolla (1863-1923), a Spanish impressionist painter. He was distinguished by his extraordinary creative energy and left behind over 2000 works. Almost all of his paintings are “quick” ones.

For some reason, his works feature a lot of white fabric in various forms. And look at how positive and joyful they all are, full of life and sunshine—in contrast to the works of other Spanish artists like Goya, Velázquez, or El Greco.

I remind you that similar posts are grouped under the tag #artrauflikes, and on beinginamerica.com in the “Art Rauf Likes section, you can find all 72 (as of now) posts (unlike Facebook, which forgets (ignores) almost half of them).

Anders Zorn| May 30 2024, 01:50

Today I delved into Richard Schmid’s “Alla Prima,” and throughout the text, he repeatedly mentions Anders Zorn, an eminent Swedish painter from the early 20th century. Curiosity piqued, I explored his art and stumbled upon this piece featuring a boat and a girl clad in white—it’s a watercolor sold for $3.5 million. His other water-themed works are similarly executed in watercolor, while nearly everything else is in oils. Observe the varied techniques he employs. Beyond his paintings, Anders also produced several hundred etchings. It astonishes me that his work had eluded me until now. Truly, a genius!

I’d like to remind you that similar posts are categorized under the tag #artrauflikes, and on beinginamerica.com in the “Art Rauf Likes section, you can explore all 69 (to date) posts. This is in stark contrast to Facebook, which tends to forget (or ignore) nearly half of them.

Takahiro Hara | May 28 2024, 15:35

Today, I am showcasing the works of an interesting Japanese artist, Takahiro Hara. His works are very diverse, but you can notice the typical Japanese love for detail, color, and meticulous execution in what is otherwise not at all typical Japanese painting.

I remind you that similar posts are grouped under the tag #artrauflikes, and on beinginamerica.com in the “Art Rauf Likes section, you can find all 69 (as of now) posts (unlike Facebook, which forgets (ignores) almost half of them).

LLMs Struggle with Simple Word Filtering Task | May 28 2024, 13:56

I recently encountered a task that no LLM can solve. It should be super simple for an LLM, but somehow they can’t manage it.

There’s a list of about 1000 words. I need to keep only the most functional words from it, like which, should, would, etc.

Request: I have a list of words: …. Select only 50 words from this list that are primarily functional and carry minimal meaning in the context of keyword searches (for example, which generate significant noise in the case of partial matches). Example – which, shall, very. Do not add any words not present on the list above. The resulting experienced list should contain only words, one word per line.

ChatGPT-4o: started outputting some words alphabetically, ending at the word asking. Thus, it did not even go past asking.

Google Gemini: began inventing words not in the list, despite clear instructions not to do so.

Google Gemini Pro: produced something, but again, invented words that weren’t on the list. Almost half invented.

Anthropic Claude also listed words alphabetically, and stopped at words starting with the letter d.

Mistral 8x7B Instruct also made up half.

In fact, no LLM has managed the task. And it’s about words, not mathematics.

https://pastebin.com/5B8w96au

Nikolai Kozlenko | May 27 2024, 17:27

Russian artist Nikolai Kozlenko (1952-2017). His work often features bright, sunny scenes with a child and a dog, evoking the scents of fresh grass, manure, and chickens. Additionally, he has created quite serious still lifes that connect through their color and style into a coherent series.

I remind you that similar posts are grouped under the tag #artrauflikes, and all 69 (currently) pieces can be found in the “Art Rauf Likes” section on beinginamerica.com, unlike Facebook, which forgets (ignores) almost half of them.

A Pittsburgh Adventure | May 27 2024, 02:08

“How about joining me in Pittsburgh?” Nadya has a volleyball tournament for three days. “And let’s take the pets with us!” It turned out that the hotel Nadya had booked, entirely by chance, happened to be pet friendly. They don’t even charge extra.

Yuki and our cat are generally accustomed to traveling. Yuki has traveled with us to Boston, Quebec, Savannah, New York, while the cat has been to Canada and Liza took him on a long trail. Thus, the 4.5-hour journey passed smoothly and quietly.

However, it was still noticeable that a country dog had made it to the big city. All around was noise, headlights, pedestrian paths often with various ventilation holes from which loud warm air blew, probably stinking to Yuki’s sensitive nose. In the city, it’s really a challenge to find a patch of grass, and the few there are get locked up with gates in the evening. Nevertheless, I’ve also gotten somewhat used to big cities myself.

We’re heading back tomorrow. I’ve always wondered how dogs perceive such trips? On one hand, all animals are comfortable when everything is predictable with minimal surprises and worries. Humans are like that too, some of them. On the other hand, mustn’t the brain somehow be rewarded for new emotions and experiences, even if it’s a canine brain? After all, biologically curiosity should be rewarded, right? Overall, I hope this is also a little “vacation” for Yuki and the cat, or perhaps even a “debut.”

Interestingly, just as we arrived and checked in, which was quite late, we went for a walk with Yuki in Point State Park. Somewhere, something suddenly boomed once, and Yuki got scared. But he soon recovered, and right then, we found out we were very close to the place from where fireworks were launched. The booms then continued for about 30 minutes non-stop, and the whole sky was filled with fireworks. But Yuki, it seems, was like — oh, it’s just fireworks, I remember them, we went to Philadelphia for the Fourth of July. And he bravely watched with us, even with a bit of interest. Good boy. We thought it was some large-scale super fireworks in anticipation of Memorial Day (which is tomorrow), but it turned out that it was just after a baseball game where the Pittsburgh Pirates won against the Atlanta Braves (Pirates won), and the fireworks at the end celebrated a beautiful finale.