Pigeon
coo coo
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User ID: 237
Pigeon
coo coo
1yr ago
Madoka Magica is just quite neat and well-constructed, twists aside. It’s made as a complete package in a way movies are supposed to be, and that many shows aren’t.
Pigeon
coo coo
1yr ago
I actually think that it was probably a bit inaccurate and it might have overestimated my spatial/nonverbal IQ (as I thought the spatial elements could be gamed a bit too easily), but most of the soul-searching is due to being quite perplexed at my lower verbal score. Previous estimations/tests of my verbal IQ returned a score, like, >10 points above my nonverbal IQ.
Pigeon
coo coo
1yr ago
English is my second language but I did start learning it very early, and often it feels more like a co-first language for me, so it still feels a bit off. I'm wondering if the poor ability in matching letters is due to spending quite a lot of time with logographic scripts as well esp. early on in life, so maybe on some level I treat words in alphabetical languages like independent glyphs?
I think the test-makers are a bit too optimistic if they think more time wouldn't help with the shape rotation portion; a monkey could do it given enough time and if it discovers a reliable method.
The CP puzzles were the
Did it while a little distracted, went away to shower and do other things, did try to concentrate for the timed tasks, also I took this near midnight so might be a little sleepy
- Full scale: 140
- Memory: 138 (VM 76/85, EM 21/26)
- Verbal: 135 (V 30/34, A 16/27)
- Spatial: 141 (MR 17/17, CP 14/18)
I'm surprised my memory and spatial is that high, and that my verbal is that low — historically formal IQ tests have pinned me as having significantly higher verbal IQ. I will blame it on English being a second language of mine (even if I am fluent), but I'm not sure it explains the disparity between the
Probably could've gotten a bit higher on the CP puzzles if I didn't rush and actually reasoned my way through some of these but then I suppose it's fairly pointless if you actually idk do it? Was I supposed to run purely on intuition on this?
Accordingly all Chinese-speaking people I've talked to about it swear up and down that R1 is profoundly poetic and unlike anything else they've seen in its native tongue, they almost cry from how well it weaves together some classical Chinese literature and aphorisms and whatnot.
I can attest to this.
One of the first things I did with DeepSeek, knowing that it was a Chinese model, was to prompt it for a poem about pigeons, written in the style of Du Fu, as a joke. It surprised me, replying with a polished, if not very inspired, poem that obeyed not only general conventions about rhyme, meter, and parallelism; it even rhymed in a way that isn't natural for mandarin, but would have been in Middle Chinese (情 and 聲)! I've since then kept on prompting it occasionally with increasingly bizarre and unhinged requests for Chinese poetry in various forms, including:
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Improving a silly poem about a lonely cat, which it did reasonably well
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A recontextualisation of two of Martial's epigrams (5.34, 10.61)
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Two poems about a fat pigeon
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A poem recasting Lu You's pet cat as a pigeon
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Two unhinged poems about "carnivorous pigeons benching 80kg"
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Another unhinged poem about "pigeons in pink suits eating penguins while pretending to be fish" (suitably for such an insane prompt it took wild liberties with metaphors regarding "pink suits", "eating", "pretending", and "fish")
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Rewriting the Ballad of Mulan with a pigeon in place of Mulan
(please don't wonder too much about why I make a habit of feeding unhinged pigeon prompts to be made into Classical Chinese poetry, I just find it very funny)
All of them have been have something of beauty in their construction, even if they are a bit basic, and some have surprising bite. (The two fat pigeon poems were variously interpreted as a metaphor for decadence and over-abundance being a sort of gilded cage, and a more nostalgic/regretful look at previous glory respectively, for example.) I certainly couldn't write poetry of the same quality, at least not without extensive dedicated study.
And I find the surprising poetic knack to almost be less impressive than its general responses, where it effortlessly weaves together literary allusions updated with context and modern words together in sentences that wouldn't be out of place if it was a planned speech written by Chinese speakers much more erudite than myself, complete with references to classical texts when appropriate — this is especially true if you try to engage it with prettier language or some pretension towards the classical language. (If you write to it in very conversational Chinese, I find that it will reply back in that same register but with a more official phraseology.) The explanatory notes in the pastebin are illustrative of this elegant colloquial Chinese *(and I have to note that this is already rather on the colloquial and vulgar side for DeepSeek commenting on poetry; it can do much better). I wouldn't be overly surprised if at some point in the near future, speeches from the CCP (esp. from lower rank functionaries) suddenly improve significantly in lyricism and style from people prompting DeepSeek or some similar AI; for what it is worth, IIRC Taiwan's official communications often hew somewhat closer to classical language (though it will still be modern), so it may be less of a shift there.
Are there bits and pieces where there could be improvements? Yes, of course. I've caught it making mistakes occasionally in rhyme, and some of the metaphors/plot in the poetry (as well as some of the phraseology in the poetry) can be improved. The poem above is a bit disjointed with the last phrase being a bit odd; I've found some occasional misunderstandings of rhyme between some characters; one time I tried to get it to parse a passage in an old Chinese agricultural encyclopedia (齊民要術) and found that it misunderstood a character. But these are mistakes that could also be made by a person, and in general I would eat my left nut to be as good as DeepSeek is in the context of Classical Chinese.
(Though I might be a chump and not realise that it's been feeding me shit poetry this whole time since I'm not actually good at Classical Chinese)
I've also tried prompting DeepSeek with requests for original 和歌 (without even using bizarre prompts), and it is much, much worse at this than it is at 絕句 or 律詩 or whatever Chinese poetic form — it often can't even keep the number of syllables straight! So it does seem to be mostly trained on Chinese data, which might naturally corrupt Japanese output when it's as finicky as poetry, especially when many of the logographic glyphs used are shared but have different phonetic content in different languages. I wonder what would happen if you tried prompting it for poetry in other (non-Sinosphere, non-English) languages.
Great Leader Donald Ieyasu Trump
That should be Iemitsu if you are looking for whoever enacted sakoku.
Pigeon
coo coo
1yr ago
Pigeon
coo coo
1yr ago
One of the schism mods wrote something about being part of a Quaker team at some leftist protest that was a really interesting read, I'll see if I can find it. IIRC it was the "death to terfs" contingent that made her notice something was off.
If you can find it I’d be interested.
Pigeon
coo coo
1yr ago
So what exactly was the choice given to Poland when Germany and the USSR decided to carve it up?
Pigeon
coo coo
1yr ago
Mostly the combat system? I think Engage has one of the most robust combat systems in FE history.
Engage's story was godawful, but let's be real who plays FE:Engage for the story?
(I had a chuckle when the first autocomplete result when I tried to google "fire emblem engage* story" in Japanese was "fire emblem engage* story bad")
edit:aword
Pigeon
coo coo
1yr ago
I find it quite funny how some westerners are super insistent on Yasuke being samurai. Because to my knowledge, even if someone successfully argues that he was, the position ought to be treated similarly to how Nils Olav is the baron of Bouvet Island, or how Incitatus was really a priest and a consul -- for all intents and purposes he had the position of an exotic pet gifted to Oda.
If it was handled better I think Yasuke would have been actually a reasonable fit (the odious woke erasure of Japanese history and appropriation of culture aside) -- he is a historical character of which we know very little, as such the game can practically make him do anything behind the scenes and it still wouldn't contradict written history since there's basically nothing to contradict!
(But of course they didn't handle it better, and it was as stupid as it sounded at first.)
Pigeon
coo coo
1yr ago
What did you think of Psycho-Pass?
The first season, not the subsequent ones.
Pigeon
coo coo
1yr ago
(I'm sure we could stretch the definition of mass murderer to include Pol Pot et al. and bullshit in a country's worth of these by harvesting across different timelines or whatever convenient plot and physics contrivance is needed, but...)
That still could theoretically work. Say every single person granted access to the kingdom must have killed at least 2 people; if the Queen and Snow White were the only two humans who weren't killers, then the Queen could kill Snow White only and still have the lowest body count of the entire kingdom.
The one thing I would adduce in favour of the human translated version (I was wrong, not professionally translated -- it was done by a British diplomat) is the use of a relatively older, somewhat more ornate style that I think matches up better with the feel of the original text, though that may well just be bias on the part of a modern person. Other than that I do feel like it is a clumsier and less accurate translation.
I couldn't comment on more modern Chinese->English translations (having not read many).
Pigeon
coo coo
1yr ago
Worth adding that it's mostly Ghost in the Shell the movie and Stand Alone Complex that are worth watching. The later spinoffs/prequel etc I thought were...kind of mid.
Pigeon
coo coo
1yr ago
I think China's tap water is still not quite there, and people often get filters because of this (in -- very dated -- experience the filters go manky pretty quickly).
Pigeon
coo coo
1yr ago
Didn’t think about that! (That said I’ve not seen basically anything about early developmental disorders since medical school)
Would be rather odd for it to suddenly happen to an adult though
Pigeon
coo coo
1yr ago
except in the trivial sense that if you murder literally everyone else
That just means she needs to be more virtuous than the competition, so if she killed everyone except even worse mass murderers she might be the “fairest” somehow?
Maybe the qualifications for citizenship in this kingdom is to be a genocidal maniac?
Pigeon
coo coo
1yr ago
Speaking of children's cartoons, Dennou Coil is probably another one that might actually fit.
Pigeon
coo coo
1yr ago
IIRC there was a funny thing where YEC paleontologists/geologists were presenting posters and research with timescales measured in mya despite the universe, like, not existing at the time (according to them).
Out of pure curiosity, I tried feeding DeepSeek the introductory paragraph of Dream of the Red Chamber, trusting that a Chinese-origin AI probably has better training for Chinese -> English translation. Pastebin of the prompt and the thinking/output here.
I think it does a decent enough job (perhaps with a couple of bits that I think are a bit awkward or somewhat misses the mark, like the translation for 堂堂鬚眉, and perhaps still being a bit too literal rather than free), but I think the translation of the opening sentence already illustrates some of what I find very difficult to translate:
今風塵碌碌，In this wearisome world of dust and toil,
一事無成，I drift through life with little to claim as my own.
忽念及當日所有之女子，Yet when I pause to recall the women who once graced my days,
一一細考較去，tracing each memory with care,
覺其行止見識皆出我之上，I find their wisdom and virtue shining far above my own.
我堂堂鬚眉，Though I bear the guise of a man, adorned with dignity and beard,
誠不若彼裙釵。I am humbled before the quiet grace of their silk and skirts.
You can see that the translation fails to capture any sense of rhythm which -- while somewhat looser than in fully classical language -- is present in the original; the original language is also generally much more succinct. This sort of poetic succinctness is part of what I find most difficult to carry over, and which is quite central to the appreciation of the language.
In comparison here's a professionally translated version translated by a 19C British diplomat, and we can compare the same opening sentence:
今風塵碌碌，Wearied with the drudgery experienced of late in the world, [the author speaking for himself, goes on to explain,]
一事無成，with the lack of success which attended every single concern,
忽念及當日所有之女子，I suddenly bethought myself of the womankind of past ages.
一一細考較去，Passing one by one under a minute scrutiny,
覺其行止見識皆出我之上，I felt that in action and in lore, one and all were far above me;
我堂堂鬚眉，that in spite of the majesty of my manliness,
誠不若彼裙釵。I could not, in point of fact, compare with these characters of the gentle sex.
This is a looser translation. I'm honestly not sure which I prefer.
What do you think?
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