Lasse Åberg

177’2024 (2024-06-25) – Tuesday

Posted on by What did you learn in School today ?

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 Åberg in a photo taken by Mattias Ahlm.

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?

5: Old nun’s prayer

*: What did you learn in school today?

4: Sommar med Lasse Åberg

5: Old nun’s prayer

*: What did you learn in school today?

3: Can algorithms translate the world?

4: Sommar med Lasse Åberg

5: Old nun’s prayer

*: What did you learn in school today?

2016-03-24 (Thursday)

Posted on by What did you learn in School today ?

Today, I learned that:

Exactly 36 years ago to the day, I set foot for the first time on Brazilian soil, more exactly at the Galeão airport in Rio de Janeiro. Cumbica airport in São Paulo did not exist yet, so I had to disembark there and switch planes. And it was worth it, because in the following flight I got a window seat on the right side of the aircraft and could see the whole Bay of Guanabara in all its beauty.

The whole week before I had been in Lisbon, where I improved my Portuguese skills and enjoyed enormously the visit to Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian with all its artifacts and objects of sheer art. The last day there, Sunday, was a perfect day to visit the medieval Sintra castle in the outskirts of Lisbon. And when it was finally time for departure from Lisbon airport, who did I meet there? The famous Swedish artist Lasse Åberg, who was bringing the whole film set to Rio de Janeiro to shoot the final scene of the comic movie Sällskapsresan (“The Charter Trip”). That scene is only a few minutes long, so I am sure that the whole film crew enjoyed their trip to Rio to get some vacation as well. See photo and reference #1 below.

sresan

“I filmens slutbilder fångar kameran in en båt utanför Copacabana i Rio, där Stig-Helmer, Majsan, Ole och Siv uppklädda sitter och läppjar på drinkar medan en orkester spelar endast för dem.”

As I said before, living in Brazil has its advantages, the (meteorological) climate and the (human) climate are of course two great benefits, and since we are in back water to the rest of the world, why would anyone ever want to perform a terrorist attack here? But I must admit that the economic and political situation right now is the worst I have ever seen during the three decades I have lived here, and there is no silver lining in view.

Enough with complaining for today, instead today was announced the highest rate of data transmission ever on our earth, a whopping 57 Gbits/s of sustained rate, with no errors! Once more, it was researchers at the University of Illinois who accomplished that feat, see more in reference #2 below.

… That’s what I learned in school !

Refs.:

1: Sällskapsresan eller Finns det svenskt kaffe på grisfesten (1980)

2: Record-speed data transmission could make big data more accessible

+: What did you learn in school today ?