4 ms·

Bollocks - really, really big bollocks. I'm 52 and wrote quite a few letters by hand on paper and posted them. You do not get to riff about something you have

Bollocks - really, really big bollocks. I'm 52 and wrote quite a few letters by hand on paper and posted them. You do not get to riff about something you have never experienced. This wankery is absolute twaddle. I doubt that whomever created this monstrosity has actually written a letter or a bluey. I've read through the nonsense "by an army of ethereal code-monkeys" and it is awful. Who on earth says: "It is a rare thing, my lord"? For starters Lord (capital L) and no one I know would even say that. This is not Victorian English. It is not even English English.

inopinatus 4y ago
> Who on earth says: "It is a rare thing, my lord"? Baldrick
- gerdesj 4y ago
  'tis a rare thing, my Lord. Baldrick always dropped vowels correctly and in keeping with the nostalgic and nonsensical notions we often have of those days. 'tis and 'twas and all that tosh was part and parcel of Bladder.
  - inopinatus 4y ago
    EDMUND: Tell me young crone, is this Putney? CRONE: That it be, that it be. EDMUND: "Yes it is". Not "that it be". You don't have to talk in that stupid voice to me. I'm not a tourist.
tlb 4y ago
Its training set includes, among other things, text written by millennials using Ye Olde English for comic effect on Reddit. I think I detect that flavor of twaddle in the output. People have the ability to hear large amounts of lowbrow content but not emit much of it. Their output doesn't match their training set in that way. It'd be interesting to try to train an ML model to have only highbrow output despite substantial lowbrow input. That's a particularly expensive labeling project because you have to hire highbrow people (or at least upper-middlebrow people who can tell the difference) to label the brow-height of every bit of content.
- gerdesj 4y ago
  "Ye Olde English" That is pronounced: the old english. The Y is actually a "thorn" - a letter lost to modern english. The trailing e on olde is the least of its worries. "Correct" spelling used to be completely optional back in the day. The word english has had many variants and the capitalisation for all three words is simply for effect. I live in a little town now called Yeovil (Somerset, UK) that was documented as gifle (bend in a river) in about 300 or 400AD and since has had at least sixty documented spellings. It went via Ivel and Givelle and a lot of others. Substitute y for g and squint a lot. That y for g thing works quite a lot for English to German place names. For example Weybury (en) and Wegburg (de) - note that -burg and -bury are fortified towns. There are a few simple patterns that can be seen with the old and modern languages but it rapidly gets out of hand and it gets quite hard to see how say: scire gereva becomes shire reeve and hence a sheriff!
lwneal 4y ago
It is incumbent upon you, dear reader, to extend the hand of charity and goodwill toward your fellow man, and in so doing eschew all malice, unkindness, and sarcasm. I implore you, do not take up your pen in anger and unleash a seething torrent of invective against my person, for I have only the deepest respect for you, and it would cause me great pain to know that I had caused you distress. Please do not sneer, including at the rest of the community, whose interests you do not represent, whose intelligence you do not comprehend, who suffer while you prosper, who live in ignorance of your existence while you enjoy the fruit of their labors. [1] https://victorianhackernews.com/ https://victorianhackernews.com/
- gerdesj 4y ago
  There is quite a difference between sounding off "for a larff" as the twittering classes call it and vicarious malice tempered with spite. I had hoped, even desired, that I had provided enough clues (as Sherlock might say) and other indicators within my former missive to ensure that a reader might infer the former was my intention rather than the latter. Perhaps I should have been more forthright and made my point crystal clear, rather than hiding behind crass attempts at humour and not a little hyperbole. If you closely examine the Victorian "H.N." rules, you'll note multiple oxymoronic phrases and not a few inconsistencies. It might appear initially that someone is attempting to effect a writing style that they are not normally accustomed to. It's still bollocks!

inopinatus 4y ago

> Who on earth says: "It is a rare thing, my lord"? Baldrick

gerdesj 4y ago
'tis a rare thing, my Lord. Baldrick always dropped vowels correctly and in keeping with the nostalgic and nonsensical notions we often have of those days. 'tis and 'twas and all that tosh was part and parcel of Bladder.
- inopinatus 4y ago
  EDMUND: Tell me young crone, is this Putney? CRONE: That it be, that it be. EDMUND: "Yes it is". Not "that it be". You don't have to talk in that stupid voice to me. I'm not a tourist.

tlb 4y ago

Its training set includes, among other things, text written by millennials using Ye Olde English for comic effect on Reddit. I think I detect that flavor of twaddle in the output. People have the ability to hear large amounts of lowbrow content but not emit much of it. Their output doesn't match their training set in that way. It'd be interesting to try to train an ML model to have only highbrow output despite substantial lowbrow input. That's a particularly expensive labeling project because you have to hire highbrow people (or at least upper-middlebrow people who can tell the difference) to label the brow-height of every bit of content.

gerdesj 4y ago
"Ye Olde English" That is pronounced: the old english. The Y is actually a "thorn" - a letter lost to modern english. The trailing e on olde is the least of its worries. "Correct" spelling used to be completely optional back in the day. The word english has had many variants and the capitalisation for all three words is simply for effect. I live in a little town now called Yeovil (Somerset, UK) that was documented as gifle (bend in a river) in about 300 or 400AD and since has had at least sixty documented spellings. It went via Ivel and Givelle and a lot of others. Substitute y for g and squint a lot. That y for g thing works quite a lot for English to German place names. For example Weybury (en) and Wegburg (de) - note that -burg and -bury are fortified towns. There are a few simple patterns that can be seen with the old and modern languages but it rapidly gets out of hand and it gets quite hard to see how say: scire gereva becomes shire reeve and hence a sheriff!

lwneal 4y ago

It is incumbent upon you, dear reader, to extend the hand of charity and goodwill toward your fellow man, and in so doing eschew all malice, unkindness, and sarcasm. I implore you, do not take up your pen in anger and unleash a seething torrent of invective against my person, for I have only the deepest respect for you, and it would cause me great pain to know that I had caused you distress. Please do not sneer, including at the rest of the community, whose interests you do not represent, whose intelligence you do not comprehend, who suffer while you prosper, who live in ignorance of your existence while you enjoy the fruit of their labors. [1] https://victorianhackernews.com/ https://victorianhackernews.com/

gerdesj 4y ago
There is quite a difference between sounding off "for a larff" as the twittering classes call it and vicarious malice tempered with spite. I had hoped, even desired, that I had provided enough clues (as Sherlock might say) and other indicators within my former missive to ensure that a reader might infer the former was my intention rather than the latter. Perhaps I should have been more forthright and made my point crystal clear, rather than hiding behind crass attempts at humour and not a little hyperbole. If you closely examine the Victorian "H.N." rules, you'll note multiple oxymoronic phrases and not a few inconsistencies. It might appear initially that someone is attempting to effect a writing style that they are not normally accustomed to. It's still bollocks!