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> a reading ease of 74.9 (fairly easy) Well, Joyce did say that it was just a lot of jokes. ========================= Episode 14 - Oxen Of The Sun DESHIL HO

> a reading ease of 74.9 (fairly easy) Well, Joyce did say that it was just a lot of jokes. ========================= Episode 14 - Oxen Of The Sun DESHIL HOLLES EAMUS. DESHIL HOLLES EAMUS. DESHIL HOLES Eamus. Send us, bright one, light one, Horhorn, quickening and wombfruit. Send us, bright one, light one, Horhorn, quickening and wombfruit. Send us bright one, light one, Horhorn, quickening and wombfruit. Hoopsa, boyaboy, hoopsa! Hoopsa, hoyaboy, hoopsa! Hoopsa, boyaboy, hoopsa. Universally that person's acumen is esteemed very little perceptive concerning whatsoever matters are being held as most profitable by mortals with sapience endowed to be studied who is ignorant of that which the most in doctrine erudite and certainly by reason of that in them high mind's ornament deserving of veneration constantly maintain when by general consent they affirm that other circumstances being equal by no exterior splendour is the .....

readthenotes1 2y ago
Reading ease: each word makes sense. -25.1 points for no 4 words in a row making sense.
retrac 2y ago
It's fairly easy... if you also speak French, Italian, Latin, and probably Ancient Greek. I don't and I know I missed a lot. I remember a lot of bilingual French/English wordplay through worked. He was multilingual and the puns/kennings are also.
comonoid 2y ago
That should read "a reading ease: Ulysses".
acabal 2y ago
Yes, it's a bit silly! The reason the score is so off is because we use the Flesch Reading Ease algorithm[1] to calculate it, which was designed for the US Navy to be able to score technical manuals. It works very well for most prose too... except highly modernist prose! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flesch-Kincaid_Reading_Ease https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flesch-Kincaid_Reading_Ease
- AlbertCory 2y ago
  Thanks. Maybe a simple fix is: don't use it for fiction. Since that's not its intent.
  - hedora 2y ago
    As an end-user of Standard Ebooks, I've found it works pretty well on average.
  - acabal 2y ago
    It works just fine for fiction. Ulysses is a very special edge case in the pantheon of all literature, so it's no surprise it doesn't work well for this one case.
    - bryanrasmussen 2y ago
      How's it handle Finnegans Wake?
      - robin_reala 2y ago
        Got another 11 years to wait before that enters the US public domain, unfortunately.
      - Avid8329 2y ago
        Ulysses has mostly "real" words while Finnegans Wake is largely made of portmanteaus. It'll be interesting to see the results!
      - lapetitejort 2y ago
        I just ran it and got "segmentation fault (core dumped)". Is this one of Joyce's silly sentences he's famous for?
        AlbertCory 2y ago
        He was such a futurist, that Joyce /s
perihelions 2y ago
- "a reading ease of 74.9 (fairly easy)" Yeah, that's a very unnecessary misuse of AI. Is there an open-source human rating site for serious books, in how difficult they are to read—how tedious, how erudite, how much pain you have to go through to get whatever reward you think you get at the end? With Ulysses near the edge of one axis, Moby Dick demarcating another... Surely this is all common knowledge to bookish people, but, where do they write it down?
- AlbertCory 2y ago
  re "unvetted" and difficulty thereof : there are already reviews of its difficulty elsewhere on the Web, e.g. from Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6752242 https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6752242 https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4827595524 https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4827595524 1. Telemachus. Difficulty : 0 2. Nestor. Difficulty : 0 3. Proteus Difficulty : 9 4. Calypso. Difficulty : 5 5. The Lotus Eaters. Difficulty : 4 6. Hades. Difficulty : 3 7. Aeolus. Difficulty : 5 8. The Laestrygonians. Difficulty : 5 etc.
- robin_reala 2y ago
  Hardly AI, just a simple Python function that implements the Flesch reading ease algorithm: https://github.com/standardebooks/tools/blob/effcf0f6db0572950375e7b2fd748fb1ae675e6c/se/formatting.py#L173 https://github.com/standardebooks/tools/blob/effcf0f6db05729...
  - perihelions 2y ago
    Right, and whether you call it "General AI" or "trivial Python script" my complaint stands–that it's a misfeature for the user, the novice reader user, the English-as-a-foreign-language user, who relies on a machine review that tell them reading Joyce is "easy English". That would seriously suck if that happened to someone, though I assume that's statistically unlikely (particularly given Joyce-is-difficult-English is a widely-known meme). It'd be an unpleasant experience, like being told glue is tasty on a pizza. I *get* that my opinion is an unpopular and minority one, so I accept the downvotes and ridicule, fine. This is the minority viewpoint I hold, I stubbornly stand by; and the hill I will die on. That it's disrespectful to users to inject unvetted machine scoring into book reviews; it's a malfeature and should not be a socially accepted practice. Treat the human user with awed respect; where you can help them, help, and where you don't know, say nothing—don't let loose some talking Python script. The user doesn't know the limitations of your script; the user doesn't know the language you posted on your page isn't authoritative language and is prone to major errors.

readthenotes1 2y ago

Reading ease: each word makes sense. -25.1 points for no 4 words in a row making sense.

retrac 2y ago

It's fairly easy... if you also speak French, Italian, Latin, and probably Ancient Greek. I don't and I know I missed a lot. I remember a lot of bilingual French/English wordplay through worked. He was multilingual and the puns/kennings are also.

comonoid 2y ago

That should read "a reading ease: Ulysses".

acabal 2y ago

Yes, it's a bit silly! The reason the score is so off is because we use the Flesch Reading Ease algorithm[1] to calculate it, which was designed for the US Navy to be able to score technical manuals. It works very well for most prose too... except highly modernist prose! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flesch-Kincaid_Reading_Ease https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flesch-Kincaid_Reading_Ease

AlbertCory 2y ago
Thanks. Maybe a simple fix is: don't use it for fiction. Since that's not its intent.
- hedora 2y ago
  As an end-user of Standard Ebooks, I've found it works pretty well on average.
- acabal 2y ago
  It works just fine for fiction. Ulysses is a very special edge case in the pantheon of all literature, so it's no surprise it doesn't work well for this one case.
  - bryanrasmussen 2y ago
    How's it handle Finnegans Wake?
    - robin_reala 2y ago
      Got another 11 years to wait before that enters the US public domain, unfortunately.
    - Avid8329 2y ago
      Ulysses has mostly "real" words while Finnegans Wake is largely made of portmanteaus. It'll be interesting to see the results!
    - lapetitejort 2y ago
      I just ran it and got "segmentation fault (core dumped)". Is this one of Joyce's silly sentences he's famous for?
      - AlbertCory 2y ago
        He was such a futurist, that Joyce /s

perihelions 2y ago

- "a reading ease of 74.9 (fairly easy)" Yeah, that's a very unnecessary misuse of AI. Is there an open-source human rating site for serious books, in how difficult they are to read—how tedious, how erudite, how much pain you have to go through to get whatever reward you think you get at the end? With Ulysses near the edge of one axis, Moby Dick demarcating another... Surely this is all common knowledge to bookish people, but, where do they write it down?

AlbertCory 2y ago
re "unvetted" and difficulty thereof : there are already reviews of its difficulty elsewhere on the Web, e.g. from Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6752242 https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6752242 https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4827595524 https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4827595524 1. Telemachus. Difficulty : 0 2. Nestor. Difficulty : 0 3. Proteus Difficulty : 9 4. Calypso. Difficulty : 5 5. The Lotus Eaters. Difficulty : 4 6. Hades. Difficulty : 3 7. Aeolus. Difficulty : 5 8. The Laestrygonians. Difficulty : 5 etc.
robin_reala 2y ago
Hardly AI, just a simple Python function that implements the Flesch reading ease algorithm: https://github.com/standardebooks/tools/blob/effcf0f6db0572950375e7b2fd748fb1ae675e6c/se/formatting.py#L173 https://github.com/standardebooks/tools/blob/effcf0f6db05729...
- perihelions 2y ago
  Right, and whether you call it "General AI" or "trivial Python script" my complaint stands–that it's a misfeature for the user, the novice reader user, the English-as-a-foreign-language user, who relies on a machine review that tell them reading Joyce is "easy English". That would seriously suck if that happened to someone, though I assume that's statistically unlikely (particularly given Joyce-is-difficult-English is a widely-known meme). It'd be an unpleasant experience, like being told glue is tasty on a pizza. I *get* that my opinion is an unpopular and minority one, so I accept the downvotes and ridicule, fine. This is the minority viewpoint I hold, I stubbornly stand by; and the hill I will die on. That it's disrespectful to users to inject unvetted machine scoring into book reviews; it's a malfeature and should not be a socially accepted practice. Treat the human user with awed respect; where you can help them, help, and where you don't know, say nothing—don't let loose some talking Python script. The user doesn't know the limitations of your script; the user doesn't know the language you posted on your page isn't authoritative language and is prone to major errors.