177’2024 (2024-06-25) – Tuesday
Today, I learned about:
In the midst of hearing about new stuff, there are also old things that come back and remind us of what the world used to be, for good and for bad. Today, I read an article in the New York Times, where the term ‘slop’ is being introduced. So what is slop then? It is basically AI generated spam. It was bound to happen, with so much computer power lying around, why should we use it only for good? You can read more about slop in the reference #1 below.
Since we are on the track of AI and computers, how about an interesting master’s thesis about machine translations? They were made by Google Translate from English to Portuguese about news of the riots in Washington DC on 6’2021 (2021-01-06) when pro-Trump supporters invaded the Capitol to impede that the US Congress would confirm Joe Biden’s victory in the presidential election. The thesis was written by a Brazilian linguist, Luana Fleury, during her master’s course at the Stockholm University’s Centre for Research on Bilingualism in spring 2023. Her work was recently awarded the Swedish Association for Applied Linguistics’ 2024 Prize for best master’s thesis, as you can see in reference #2 below. The complete thesis is in reference # 3. Thank you, Luana, for sharing your thoughts with us!
Finally, last Sunday I listened to the Swedish artist, comedian, … Lasse Åberg remembering some interesting and funny moments in his life. (According to him, the only thing that he has not tried in his life is artistic swimming!) It happened in the traditional Summer program at Radio Sweden, where, mostly, famous people give us a peep into their personal lives and play some music that they like. I already published a post about him on 84’2016 (2016-03-24) about when I met Lasse on my first trip to Brazil. If you understand Swedish, then you must listen to this hilarious program, see reference # 4 below.
Lasse finished his program by reading a prayer from the 17th century, found in Wells Cathedral, England. It contains so much wisdom from a humble person that it is worth being considered by most of the people still alive. The entire prayer can be found in reference # 5 below.
That’s what I learned in school today!
Ref.:
1: Slop
2: ASLA’s 2024 prize for best master’s thesis
*: What did you learn in school today?
*: What did you learn in school today?
*: What did you learn in school today?
What did you learn in School today? 