Notices by Robert Belton (shiawase@mastodon.social), page 2

@mario
The new fashion for pirates without a parrot.

apropos to nothing. I’ve seen a man in Nagoya (I think) out for a walk with his cat riding on his shoulders. no pics as I’m never comfortable with street photography of people.

(edit - bloody autocorrect)

@mario
The other question I’d have is what ここ refers to. Tokyo? or some other place known to both the singer and the “you”. Is it a place or a place in time? present Tokyo vs. an older Tokyo.
She seems to be talking to someone non-millennial.

@mario
I could still be missing something. But the negative on 特別 needs to be accounted for. The only positive that I can think of is a sentence ending asking for agreement / conformation ~~じゃない？　Which doesn’t seem to fit.

I always have to parse it back to the barest sentence and work back up. and look for set patterns with negatives and particles.

@mario

I would say … you have no idea how to put into words that here is not so special.
くらい can indicate evaluation and I’d say low evaluation given the preceding negative.

https://djtguide.github.io/grammar/dojg/dojgpages/intermediateくらい.html

@mario

I just watched that on 1.75x speed by mistake. (the speed setting is ‘sticky’ in Invidious)
I like my uptempo cut. 🤣 The original feels too languid now.

@mario
an improvement over the non-working links from chatGPT before. I wonder if the prompt searches normally then summarizes the top links.

Your name is almost a ‘google whack’. So I’d expect an accurate result. I think mine might return a Japanese scholar or an American jurist namesake. at best.

I’m undecided if it’s better or worse than regular search. (I only had the daily 4 wishes to experiment)

@mario
if / when it returns mistakes or falsehoods, I wonder how you go about rescuing your reputation or correcting mistakes.
Does it provide real working links to your online presence or where it got its facts?

I wonder if Bing or ChatGPT can be held for libel. The presentation is more publishing than search result, even if it is automated.

@mario
I would have said ボサボサ

@mario
I’m saddened by the short sightedness of shutdowns of language programs in schools. Usually to divert money to stem. I’m glad I had the experience of learning languages, even if only to schoolboy levels.
I have a calculator can I skip maths class?

A better question might be how to leverage MT (& other tools) in learning languages.

It’s also a bit rich coming from a native English speaker. A dominant language that most of the world is expected to learn.

/end rant/

@mario
Subeditors and headlines eh?!

In a utilitarian sense he’s probably right. I’m not going to relearn French or start German just to read a toot. I think it polite to at least try to attempt the language on holidays.

For low risk & prosaic tasks MT will be fine. Not so for medical, legal or diplomatic use. Both Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima (at least in part) were caused by mistranslations.

Absent a Babelfish, speaking a language will be better than a stop start MT experience.

@mario
If I try to hum while pinching my nose I can’t, so maybe they were on to something in naming it.

@mario
I could see how it would improve translation. (I think). The problem is more constrained (but not simple) with translation; you have a large prompt and only so many ways of outputting a meaningful matching result. And while we expect accuracy, we aren’t asking for extra information not present in the original text. (Leaving aside stylistic choices etc.)
Is training an LLM really it doing research? Can it ‘do’ anything? There’s so much anthropomorphic language around ‘AI’

@mario
Because I don’t have a background it’s hard to get a handle on how LLMs work and what processes they go through.
I have heard a presentation that talked about how expert training didn’t produce as good a result as just increasing the size of the LLM (what GPT4 did).
Leaving aside factual accuracy. Going from a single sentence question prompt to several paragraphs of a plausible answer in good English through a program is frankly amazing.

@mario
Maybe.

Once I assess a site’s trustworthiness it’s more or less constant. ChatGPT has to be evaluated each time. The hope seems to be that if it comes up with proper prose that prose will also be accurate and factual.

If some respected organisation came out with “Expert Japanese-English Teacher” I’d probably trust that over ChatGPT for accurate information (rather than a summary or starting point)

Time will tell.

@mario
I think one of the tools people use for judging sites (or expertise) is how they are written and presented. This partially goes out the window now with ChatGPT.
There’s also reputational trust. Eg BBC, NHK
Even websites for Japanese, I assume good intent and human oversight. With content sourced from books and experience.
It’s possible to judge a site as a whole, or see maybe a specific area you don’t value.
The internet skill is in judging sites. GPT makes that harder.

@mario
It’s the sense of distrust in the accuracy of the output that diminishes the usefulness for me. It lacks authority because there’s always that sense of I should check that, which somehow defeats the purpose. The catch 22 of needing expertise to catch any errors.
If I found the info in a book or (most) websites I’d believe it. GPT algorithm ? Not so much. Maybe because despite how it’s marketed expertise is not it’s purpose, plausible English prose is.

Great film from 1959 about the precursor to the Shinkansen. The Kodama limited express reaching 160km/h. It took 7 hours 50 mins Osaka to Tokyo. Now it takes 2 hrs 20 mins.
This shows the changes that were necessary to get higher speeds.

https://youtu.be/4SwX7_zDSzI

Seldom discussed is the frequency of the Shinkansen and how many train sets that entails. 1 per 3 mins needs at least 80 sets in operation on the Osaka Tokyo route. There are over 2,600 sets in Japan in total !

@mario
It’s one of my favorite films. I would have liked to see the play adaptation at the National Theatre but pandemic and no desire to sit in an audience.
I like his use of documentary techniques.
だれも知らない also uses them to help get performances from the child actors. It’s quite a powerful film and I recommend it if you haven’t seen it.

I struck gold with the YouTube algorithm.

Electric Fan Harp | 扇風琴
This instrument was based on the idea "What if Jimi Hendrix, the god of electric guitars, played electric fans as instruments?" The light bulb and guitar strap are attached to an electric fan, and the fan blade is replaced with a self-made disc with holes

https://youtu.be/QJavHc48iZU

@mario
Upper Tooting. How suitable for Mastodon. ?

Sorry for the non sequitur