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too much drama for a referendum that is not legally binding

Google had a problem. Their AI engine spoke with grammatical precision and factual accuracy, but its diction remained terse and limp. They wanted it to be more conversational, so they made it read 2,865 romance novels. Now Google has a poet.

In an unpublished paper entitled “Generating Sentences from a Continuous Space,” researchers documented what the Google Brain Team’s pet AI had learned from its steamy binge-fest. The experimental parameters are simple and might actually make for a fun group writing game of some sort. The team gave the AI a starting sentence and an ending sentence. Then they asked artificial intelligence to bridge the two concepts using up to thirteen additional sentences. In a sense, they gave it a beginning and an end and asked it to tell a story. What came out was… a little strange. Take a look:

there is no one else in the world. there is no one else in sight. they were the only ones who mattered. they were the only ones left. he had to be with me. she had to be with him. i had to do this. i wanted to kill him. i started to cry. i turned to him.

poleteli

Сараево, Федерация Боснии и Герцеговины, Босния и Герцеговина

Альфредо Олива | Источник | Карта

historical-nonfiction

The Moksha people, who live in western Moldova and bordering Russia, and whose existence dates to about the beginning of the 1st millennium BCE, had a unique numeral system. They were tally marks carved on wood, drawn on clay or birch bark. In some places they were preserved until the beginning of 1900s, mostly among small traders, bee-keepers, and village elders.

lord-kitschener

I only search for jobs because alas under the hell of capitalism nobody will pay me to drink in excess while listening to balkan music, both the folk and trashtastic pop kinds

darksilenceinsuburbia

Elizabeth Jordan

screenedits

mapsontheweb

Countries with wordless national anthems.

More maps of anthems >>

ancientpeoples

Pair of Gold Snake Bracelets

Roman, 1st century AD

In the ancient Greek and Roman world, snakes symbolized fertility and were believed to ward off evil. It is probably due to the animal’s protective associations that solid gold snake rings and bracelets were among the most popular types of Greek and Roman jewelry. Snake bracelets were often worn in pairs, around the wrists as well as on the upper arms.

Source: The Walters Art Museum

heck-yeah-old-tech

Commodore 64 Executive portable computer. I have to admit I didn’t know this existed, or that anyone took C=64’s that seriously as to lug them.

And then when I met my best friend in the early 1990s, he had one.

thelingspace

The linguistics of “noot”

Who here remembers Pingu, that European stop-motion show about a little penguin, his family, and his adventures? Besides the unmistakable “noot noot” heralding Pingu’s arrival on the scene, he and his penguin pals converse in a special kind of gobbledygook that fans have found evocative of any number of languages over the years.

Well, it turns out that linguist Tony Thorne has analyzed Pingu’s lingo, officially known as Penguinese, attempting to identify exactly what makes it so catchy. Penguinese has a few recognizable, repeatable vocabulary bits (”noot” foremost among them), and the intonation patterns follow those of a lot of European languages. Then there’s the fact that when the little penguin talks, it’s with the speeding-up and slowing-down typical of natural language, and pauses and hesitations that help it all sound authentic.

So what’s the secret? As Thorne suggests, try speaking in coherent gibberish for more than a few minutes and you’ll find yourself at a loss, or just repeating the same syllables over and over. But the success of Penguinese may be traceable to the linguistic creativity and thespian knowhow of the man behind Pingu’s original voice, Italian character actor Carlo Bonomi.

Bonomi, who started Penguinese, claims having been influenced by grammelot, a performative nonsense language used by traveling clowns and actors in medieval Italy and France. This could account for why Pingu’s speech works so well: traditionally, grammelot isn’t just gibberish. It’s evocative gibberish, designed to mimic the intonation patterns of the language spoken by your audience and get them right in the feels. (Some coarse language lurks behind that link, so be forewarned!) Is this what Pingu’s patter achieves? Given the show’s lasting popularity, all signs points to yes.

One last thought on the topic of grammelot. It feels to us like this may be the same glossolalic finesse that inspired fellow Italian Adriano Celentano to compose the unforgettable Prisencolinensinainciusol, a nonsense song made to sound like American English. Should this be thought of as American grammelot? And can it go anywhere without cute penguins?

heavvymetalqueen-deactivated202

considering Bonomi is of the Dario Fo generation I’m not surprised he used a penguin grammelot for Pingu! also damn this man was also La Linea! And the announcements in Milan station, lol