Tag: science

The Fabrication of Poet James Clifford | November 04 2024, 15:33

This is an excerpt from the poem “Square” by English poet James Clifford, translated by Vladimir Livshits. Clifford was a man with a remarkable destiny, crushed in the vices of two world wars. He was born on the eve of World War I, in 1913 in London, and died in 1944 while repelling a German tank attack in the Ardennes.

Paradoxically, the legacy of the young English poet was better known in the Soviet Union than in his homeland. While in England they asked, “Who is Mr. Clifford?”—in the USSR, his new poems were regularly published from the mid-sixties onward. Thanks must be given to his translator—Vladimir Livshits. He was the first to translate into Russian the famous, seemingly familiar lines from “Retreat in the Ardennes”: “There were five of us left. In a chilly dugout. The command had lost its mind. And was already fleeing.”

But Livshits didn’t just translate these lines; he practically “sanctified” them, because James Clifford, the young English poet who fell in 1944 while repelling the German attack, was for Livshits not just a translation subject but also his own creation. The real James Clifford, who supposedly was born in London, lost his parents early, and was raised by a grandfather—a connoisseur of English and Scottish folklore—never actually existed. Following Walter, Livshits repeated: “If Clifford did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.” And he invented him.

For decades, Livshits published his own poems in the Soviet Union, presenting them as translations of the non-existent English poet James Clifford.

(taken from the video “Armen and Fedor,” “Comrade Hemingway: How the USSR reforged the novel ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’?”)

This is how you hack the system 🙂

* * *

SQUARES

Vladimir Lifshits

.

And yet the order of things is absurd.

People, melting metal,

weaving fabric, baking bread—

Someone has shamelessly robbed you.

.

Not just your labor, love, leisure—

They stole the curiosity of open eyes;

Feeding truths by handfuls,

They robbed you of the ability to think.

.

For every question, they handed an answer.

Seeing all, you see nothing at all.

Your unquestioning minds

Have become matrices of newspapers.

.

They have handed an answer for every question…

Dressed both drab and colorful,

Morning and evening, like a vacuum cleaner,

The metro swallows you up.

.

Here you go, dense as caviar,

All cut from the same cloth,

People who can shoe,

People who can procure.

.

And here they go, row upon row—

March – march – march — march,

So far only for parades,

People who can kill…

.

But one day, amidst the trivial affairs,

Feeding you crumbs,

You decided to break out

From the tiresome square forms.

.

You rebelled. You scream: “They steal!”—

You refuse to comply.

And first, those will come to you

Who know how to persuade.

.

Their words will carry weight,

They will be exalted and kind.

They will prove, as twice two,

That you cannot leave this game.

.

And you will repent, poor brother.

Misguided brother, you will be forgiven.

To chants, you’ll be gently returned

Back to your square.

.

And if you persist:

– I won’t give in!.. No going back!…

Silently, from the shadows

Will come those who know how to kill.

.

You will gulp your despair like henna,

And on squares, as if in a dream,

A blue patch will be lined

With a black grid in your window.

Decoding Betteridge’s Law of Headlines | November 03 2024, 21:12

Today I learned about Betteridge’s Law of Headlines: the rule that posits “If a headline ends with a question mark, the answer is ‘no’.” This law is named after British journalist Ian Betteridge who mentioned it in 2009, though the principle itself has long been in existence. The gist is that if the publisher was confident about a positive answer, they would have phrased it as a statement rather than a question. By framing it as a question, they dodge the responsibility for its accuracy. This sets up automatic expectations for the reader based on the article’s headline, functioning as positive feedback, and headlines are now phrased in this manner not because there’s some psychological explanation, but because it has become customary that a question in the headline implies an unconventional “yes” answer.

I hope I’ve saved you time on reading pre-election articles.

Unveiling a Lost Chopin Waltz: Discovery, Recording, and Mystery | November 01 2024, 14:52

So, here Chopin has released a new single.

This year, in the New York library and the Morgan museum’s vault, a manuscript of a previously unknown waltz was found—short and likely unfinished. After thorough analysis, experts concluded that it indeed belongs to Chopin, identified by his handwriting, specific features, dating, etc. Chopin has roughly 250 works and up to 28 waltzes, of which only nine were published; the rest were lost or destroyed, making this newly discovered piece incredibly rare.

The unsigned waltz was never officially acknowledged by Chopin, remaining unpublished and out of the public eye. Little is known about its origin and its possible acquisition by A. Sherrill Whiting Jr., the director of the New York School of Interior Design. From there, a close friend, Arthur Sacks, bought the piece from Whiting’s wife, Jean, and donated it to Morgan in 2019. It has only recently undergone expert examination.

Lang Lang recorded and posted the performance.

https://youtu.be/Poq0VrCF2vo?si=cD8zAyGbG36UW3c_

Enhancing an EPUB Converter for Complex Texts | October 30 2024, 22:46

I have enhanced my EPUB converter for reading complex English literary texts. In the previous version, I used to send chapters to ChatGPT, asking it to translate (in brackets) the difficult words. I was asked in the comments how the difficult words are determined. In general, after having read the first quarter of the book this way, I realized that not all difficult words are considered difficult by ChatGPT, including some obviously complex ones, which it doesn’t translate.

Ultimately, I made a new version. Visually, it differs in that translations now appear above words. This arrangement does not break the sentences into pieces like when the translation was in brackets. But that’s not all.

I have changed the method for identifying “difficult words requiring translation.” It now operates with a list of 300,000 words based on their frequency of use in the English language. The first 3.5% of this frequency-sorted list (determined empirically) are now considered simple and do not require translation. The rest do. Technically, I also have a difficulty group for each word rated 1-30, but unfortunately, I cannot highlight them in colors in Books.

Then, the word needs to be translated into Russian somehow. To avoid using LLM for this, I found Müller’s dictionary with 55,954 words. The word that needs translation is put into its normal form and searched in the dictionary. If found, the first definition from the dictionary is taken. Unfortunately, the first one is not always correct, but it works most of the time. If Müller’s dictionary does not have it, the system moves to LLM. Here, I have two implementations – using local LLAMA3 and using OpenAI. The local one is obviously slower and the translation quality worse, but it is free. There is a separate system that checks what LLAMA3 has translated and makes it redo it if it returns something inappropriate (e.g., too long or containing special characters).

In addition, for LLM-based translations, the system is provided with more context — the sentence that contains the word to be translated. This makes the translation closer to the text. There are still minor flaws, but they are generally livable.

However, even with all this, the translation via LLM is of low-quality. Ideally, additional dictionaries should be connected so that if a word is not found in Müller’s, other dictionaries are tried, and only then, if still not found, would we use LLM. I’ve already acquired one and will be experimenting.

If the system tags too many obvious words, I can adjust a coefficient, and the frequency group from which words are not translated will be larger, and surely these obvious words will stop being translated. Of course, there are always “rare” words that do not need to be translated because their translation is obvious. But it’s not easy to teach the script to recognize such instances; it’s easier to just leave it as it rarely happens.

Next, the translation is displayed above the word. For Books, this also involves some complex maneuvers, but it eventually worked on both iPad and laptop. Unfortunately, for the phone, it needs to be done slightly differently, so the book version for the phone and the version for iPad/computer will be different. But this doesn’t really bother me much, what’s the difference.

Navigating the Complexity of Global Numerical Nomenclatures | October 29 2024, 22:55

Russian TV channels have demanded two undecillion (2*10^36) rubles from Google. But what amused me was something else — technically, Google, or rather Googol, stands for 10^100. So, they’ve got plenty left in reserve.

But it was also interesting to learn that for large numbers there are two different systems of nomenclature. They diverge starting from billion, which in one system is 10^9 (equivalent to a milliard in the other) and in the other system it’s a trillion, which is 1000 times more, and this trillion in the second system means quintillion in the first, and so on, ultimately making the undecillion of the first system equivalent to sextillion in the second. It’s quite a mess, really.

The complexity is further increased by a third variant, called “the first, but not quite” — with the amendment that 10^9 is still considered a milliard, not a billion.

Different countries historically use different scales. The first, which is called the short scale, has primarily been adopted in English-speaking countries. In their scale (thus, ours) — 10^9 is a billion. In the Arab world, it’s generally a milliard (مليار), like in Saudi Arabia, it’s a billion (بليون).

Russia is also among those using the short scale. Hence, they demand an undecillion from Google, not a sextillion.

The second scale, which is long, is used by the Danes, French, Germans, Portuguese, and Spanish. For them, 10^9 is called a milliard with adjustments for pronunciation and grammatical representation in the language.

And then there’s a slew of exceptions, including countries that don’t fit into either of these two “camps.”

But what’s even more interesting is that until 1974, Britain called a billion a milliard, a trillion was known as a billion, and a quadrillion as a billiard. In 1974, they officially switched to the short system.

Canada faces the toughest situation. There’s already confusion with units, and the big number systems add to the mix. Officially, it adopts the short system, like the US, but due to bilingualism (English and French) and significant cultural influence from France, you might occasionally encounter the long system. South Africa is in a similar situation.

Curiously, the only article about this in French (and it says sextillion!) — is from RT. No one else in the world seems to care about this stuff. 🙂

Exploring the Evolution of Typewriters and Their Impact | October 29 2024, 01:17

I just found out that IBM used to manufacture mechanical typewriters, which a) had a Backspace key b) featured a moving print head.

The 1984 model is called IBM Correcting Selectric III. It has an intriguing way of deleting a letter – it strikes the paper with a special adhesive tape that removes the ink without a trace.

Interestingly, in 1976, the USSR developed a keylogger for American typewriters and somehow installed them in the typewriters at the US Embassy. It is reported that many secrets were uncovered this way.

I was also curious about how they managed with this in Japan and China. Their typewriters don’t have a thousand buttons. Believe it or not, they have a single button. But. A thousand squares where they aim the “sight”. Well, I mean, there are different kinds, also like usual ones, but there are models where it’s like this (attaching a few photos). There is even a model with a cylinder that holds 2400 Japanese characters, and you need to rotate and shift the cylinder for each character. I’ll leave a video in the comments. A very elegant engineering solution.

Moreover, in 1947 in China, the Mingkwai typewriter was invented and released, which theoretically allowed typing up to 90,000 characters at a speed of 50 characters per minute. Imagine what an engineering feat that was for the time. You press a key – nothing happens, something clicks inside the typewriter. You press a second time – something else clicks, but this time options that meet the criteria set by those two presses appear on the screen. And the third press essentially selects one of these characters. Meanwhile, the screen… what screen in 1947… It was a window through which characters from a large set were displayed. One character – three presses.

Only today did I realize that the Shift key is called Shift because it physically shifted the basket on typewriters. And while I’m at it, I’ll write about the Return or CR key – carriage return (known as Enter), which is so named because it physically returned the carriage to the beginning of the line. And the underscore (_) was invented to underline previously typed words.

It’s also interesting that the QWERTY layout was dictated by the need to spread frequently consecutive characters further apart to prevent the levers from crashing into each other during fast typing.

My introduction to typewriters in childhood, it seems, began with electric ones, although, of course, I also typed on mechanical ones. Interestingly, Friedrich Nietzsche’s encounter with the typing machine also started with electric ones. I read that he had the first shrivekugel.

In New York, I once saw a store (the only one I know of) that still trades typewriters.

Another interesting fact: when Edwin Hunter McFarland was developing a typewriter for Thailand, he ran out of keys for two consonants (“ฎ” and “ฅ”), and ultimately they disappeared from the language.

Also interesting is that the record for typing speed of 216 words per minute was set 78 years ago by Stella Pajunas-Garnand on a typewriter. In 2005 Barbara Blackburn came close (212 wpm), and in 2019 Anthony “Chark” Ermolin broke the record (233 wpm). Interestingly, such championships are organized by the company daskeyboard, I have two keyboards from them at home and am thinking of buying a third (by the way, has anyone bought one recently?)

In the comments, links to various things from ^^^^

The Bitter Lesson: ABBYY’s Decline and the Shift in Computational Linguistics | October 27 2024, 12:43

Very interesting material about the decline of ABBYY and the crisis in computer linguistics, how AI is taking over ABBYY’s business and what Compreno is and why it didn’t take off as expected.

https://sysblok.ru/blog/gorkij-urok-abbyy-kak-lingvisty-proigrali-poslednjuju-bitvu-za-nlp/

Enhancing “Lolita”: Automated Annotations for Easier Reading | October 27 2024, 03:40

After reading the first few dozen pages, I almost considered giving up on “Lolita” because I had to consult the dictionary way too often. Well, additionally, there was studying various sentence structures and references, but that’s actually interesting, although it does slow down the reading.

Then I thought, well, am I not a programmer or what. So together with ChatGPT, we created automated annotations. First off, it’s worth mentioning that “Lolita” has an annotated version with 200 pages and an extensive introduction of 100 pages. These annotations cover many topics, but they rarely clarify obscure words, assuming the reader is educated enough to understand that conspicuousness (/kənˈspɪkjuːəsnɪs/) means noticeability, thingamabob is a thingamajig, and callipygian means the same as callipygous, translating to “having perfect buttock form”. For instance, at the very start of the book, “My father was a gentle, easy-going person, a salad of racial genes: a Swiss citizen, of mixed French and Austrian descent with a dash of the Danube” — I wondered what this Danube was, and it turns out to be the river, Dunai in Russian, which in my version now appears in grey brackets after Danube.

Ultimately, in addition to the existing annotations, my script also adds translations into Russian in italic brackets, and it also includes some opinions on individual phrases and references — for this, after a sentence, something is added in brackets, which you need to click on.

With such enhancements, reading becomes much easier. And more interesting too

Reevaluating Vereshchagin: Artistic Insights and Imperial Narratives | October 25 2024, 00:56

To diversify the collection of contemporary artists with the most compelling pieces, let’s turn to a well-known figure: Vasily Vereshchagin.

The first painting is “The Apotheosis of War, one of his most striking works. My research suggests that, contrary to its common interpretation as an anti-war manifesto—widely accepted by sources like Wikipedia—it wasn’t intended as such. Instead, the painting belongs to the “Barbarians cycle, depicting the brutality of Samarkand’s rulers and implicitly supporting Russian expansion in Central Asia.

Vereshchagin exhibited his Turkestan Series at the Crystal Palace in London. According to the English Digital Humanities Institute and several other sources, his introduction to the exhibition catalogue framed Russia’s conquest of Central Asia as a necessary civilizing mission. It was also intended to allay British doubts about who their true friends and neighbors in the region were.

Another work from the “Barbarians cycle is “Surrounded—Pursued (1872), which the artist himself later destroyed by burning it.

Vereshchagin wrote, “Whatever the cost, with full respect for law and justice, the question [of colonizing Turkestan] must be resolved without delay. This concerns not only Russia’s future in Asia, but above all the welfare of those under our rule. Frankly, they stand to benefit more from the final establishment of our authority than from a return to the old tyranny…

It seems the series was funded by Konstantin Kaufman, who oversaw the conquest and colonization of Central Asia. While I couldn’t confirm this directly, some sources suggest that the goal of exhibiting these paintings in London was to convince the British of the necessity of Russian control over Samarkand. The show, reportedly, had political undertones, aligning with ongoing negotiations over spheres of influence in the region.

Thus, while later interpretations of “The Apotheosis of War cast it as an anti-war statement, the painting originally served as a propaganda tool, reflecting the historical conflicts and imperial interests of Russia.

The second painting, featuring an eagle, is titled “Russian Camp in Turkestan.

In many ways, Vereshchagin resembles a photojournalist of his time—only instead of a camera, he wielded brushes, canvases, and paints.

Similar posts are grouped under the tag #artrauflikes, and the complete collection of all 121 entries can be found on beinginamerica.com under the “Art Rauf Likes section—unlike Facebook, which neglects nearly half of them