Pigeon
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User ID: 237
Pigeon
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5d ago
Pigeon
coo coo
5d ago
One of the schism mods wrote something about being part of a Quaker team at some leftist protest that was a really interesting read, I'll see if I can find it. IIRC it was the "death to terfs" contingent that made her notice something was off.
If you can find it I’d be interested.
Pigeon
coo coo
6d ago
So what exactly was the choice given to Poland when Germany and the USSR decided to carve it up?
Pigeon
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10d ago
Mostly the combat system? I think Engage has one of the most robust combat systems in FE history.
Engage's story was godawful, but let's be real who plays FE:Engage for the story?
(I had a chuckle when the first autocomplete result when I tried to google "fire emblem engage* story" in Japanese was "fire emblem engage* story bad")
edit:aword
Pigeon
coo coo
10d ago
I find it quite funny how some westerners are super insistent on Yasuke being samurai. Because to my knowledge, even if someone successfully argues that he was, the position ought to be treated similarly to how Nils Olav is the baron of Bouvet Island, or how Incitatus was really a priest and a consul -- for all intents and purposes he had the position of an exotic pet gifted to Oda.
If it was handled better I think Yasuke would have been actually a reasonable fit (the odious woke erasure of Japanese history and appropriation of culture aside) -- he is a historical character of which we know very little, as such the game can practically make him do anything behind the scenes and it still wouldn't contradict written history since there's basically nothing to contradict!
(But of course they didn't handle it better, and it was as stupid as it sounded at first.)
Pigeon
coo coo
14d ago
What did you think of Psycho-Pass?
The first season, not the subsequent ones.
Pigeon
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15d ago
(I'm sure we could stretch the definition of mass murderer to include Pol Pot et al. and bullshit in a country's worth of these by harvesting across different timelines or whatever convenient plot and physics contrivance is needed, but...)
That still could theoretically work. Say every single person granted access to the kingdom must have killed at least 2 people; if the Queen and Snow White were the only two humans who weren't killers, then the Queen could kill Snow White only and still have the lowest body count of the entire kingdom.
The one thing I would adduce in favour of the human translated version (I was wrong, not professionally translated -- it was done by a British diplomat) is the use of a relatively older, somewhat more ornate style that I think matches up better with the feel of the original text, though that may well just be bias on the part of a modern person. Other than that I do feel like it is a clumsier and less accurate translation.
I couldn't comment on more modern Chinese->English translations (having not read many).
Pigeon
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16d ago
Worth adding that it's mostly Ghost in the Shell the movie and Stand Alone Complex that are worth watching. The later spinoffs/prequel etc I thought were...kind of mid.
Pigeon
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16d ago
I think China's tap water is still not quite there, and people often get filters because of this (in -- very dated -- experience the filters go manky pretty quickly).
Pigeon
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16d ago
Didn’t think about that! (That said I’ve not seen basically anything about early developmental disorders since medical school)
Would be rather odd for it to suddenly happen to an adult though
Pigeon
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16d ago
except in the trivial sense that if you murder literally everyone else
That just means she needs to be more virtuous than the competition, so if she killed everyone except even worse mass murderers she might be the “fairest” somehow?
Maybe the qualifications for citizenship in this kingdom is to be a genocidal maniac?
Pigeon
coo coo
16d ago
Speaking of children's cartoons, Dennou Coil is probably another one that might actually fit.
Pigeon
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16d ago
IIRC there was a funny thing where YEC paleontologists/geologists were presenting posters and research with timescales measured in mya despite the universe, like, not existing at the time (according to them).
Out of pure curiosity, I tried feeding DeepSeek the introductory paragraph of Dream of the Red Chamber, trusting that a Chinese-origin AI probably has better training for Chinese -> English translation. Pastebin of the prompt and the thinking/output here.
I think it does a decent enough job (perhaps with a couple of bits that I think are a bit awkward or somewhat misses the mark, like the translation for 堂堂鬚眉, and perhaps still being a bit too literal rather than free), but I think the translation of the opening sentence already illustrates some of what I find very difficult to translate:
今風塵碌碌，In this wearisome world of dust and toil,
一事無成，I drift through life with little to claim as my own.
忽念及當日所有之女子，Yet when I pause to recall the women who once graced my days,
一一細考較去，tracing each memory with care,
覺其行止見識皆出我之上，I find their wisdom and virtue shining far above my own.
我堂堂鬚眉，Though I bear the guise of a man, adorned with dignity and beard,
誠不若彼裙釵。I am humbled before the quiet grace of their silk and skirts.
You can see that the translation fails to capture any sense of rhythm which -- while somewhat looser than in fully classical language -- is present in the original; the original language is also generally much more succinct. This sort of poetic succinctness is part of what I find most difficult to carry over, and which is quite central to the appreciation of the language.
In comparison here's a professionally translated version translated by a 19C British diplomat, and we can compare the same opening sentence:
今風塵碌碌，Wearied with the drudgery experienced of late in the world, [the author speaking for himself, goes on to explain,]
一事無成，with the lack of success which attended every single concern,
忽念及當日所有之女子，I suddenly bethought myself of the womankind of past ages.
一一細考較去，Passing one by one under a minute scrutiny,
覺其行止見識皆出我之上，I felt that in action and in lore, one and all were far above me;
我堂堂鬚眉，that in spite of the majesty of my manliness,
誠不若彼裙釵。I could not, in point of fact, compare with these characters of the gentle sex.
This is a looser translation. I'm honestly not sure which I prefer.
What do you think?
Pigeon
coo coo
16d ago
I think calling artists and journalists "poor members of the upper classes", while not entirely wrong, isn't my preferred framing. They're semi-prestigious, certainly, but my definition of upper class would be someone like 2rafa. They're often members of the intelligentsia, and have a somewhat disproportionate impact on public affairs, but they're not upper class by most definitions. Poor but upper class is close to a contradiction in terms.
Perhaps a more accurate description would be members of an upper class in the same way that samurai were in Edo society, literati were in China since essentially the Warring States, or Brahmins in India?
A tool that does 99% of my work for me? Great, I'm a hundred times as productive! There might even be a hundred times more work to do, but I'll probably see some wage growth. There might be some turmoil in the employment market.
A tool that does 100% of the labor? What are you paying me for?
The whole point is that AI is approaching 100%, might even be there, or is so close employers don't care and will fire you.
To be honest the pessimistic case of the AI "only" being able to do 99% or even 90% of human cognitive work scares me in terms of social upheaval. It might be better off in the long run, but it sure looks like it'll be a bumpy ride...
Pigeon
coo coo
16d ago
To add onto this, the lack of an objective grading criteria meant that -- even moreso than in modern times -- whether people passed or not would be at the whims of the examiners, and being able to cotton onto the latest trends in political thought could be quite important lest an otherwise excellently argued answer be marked down for being against the prevailing opinion (...or the examiner's opinion). There are also opportunities for unfair discrimination -- Lu You famously finished first in his regional examinations in his second try ~1154, but was disqualified (along with all other regional examination...valedictorians?) for threatening the progression of Qin Hui's grandson.
Unfortunately can't recall my sources, but interestingly the imperial exams also had a sort of affirmative action -- different districts and provinces would have quotas for how many people could advance to the next stage of examinations, and generally the less well-off districts and provinces would get a higher per-capita quota to fill. This lead to situations where families would try to (at least in paper) go to bumfuck nowhere, bribe a local with the same surname to lie that they are some sort of long-lost family (so that their son would be able to be registered as a resident there), and try to game the system that way.
This sounds like questions that would be asked perhaps since Wang Anshi's reforms from the 11th century up to the end of the examinations in 1904. I believe the late imperial exams had three sections -- on the interpretation of classics, commentary on history, and commentary/analysis of current events and policy suggestions thereof.
The earlier examinations had a greater focus on pure rote memorisation and poetic ability, IIRC, though there would still be analytical questions on politics and policy. Some of the classics questions during the Tang dynasty had the first examples of fill-in-the-blank questions in history. (This is not to mention the other early examinations that were easier -- there was a pure classics examination that was easier, as well as a law exam (I believe there were a few more but cannot recall immediately).
I only got vague answers as to what the actual questions were—something about understanding Confucius' ideas or writing about proper government structures.
It would be difficult to answer succinctly, as there were initially several sorts of examinations during the Tang which (IIRC?) coalesced into the one examination stream that we associate with the imperial exams; as you note, there are different levels of exams, so there would be different types of questions for each; and the contents and style of the exams themselves vary over time.
The hike up is relatively uneventful; the path is nearly deserted. Hiking doesn't seem as popular in China as other activities. At the top, we stop for KFC. They have hamburgers and grilled chicken but no actual fried chicken—a sad state of affairs that may have cost them their lives in the States, but it is still crowded. The burgers were... weird, kind of loose and almost wet.
If the mainland is anything like Hong Kong, McDonalds might have better chicken than KFC.
Pigeon
coo coo
18d ago
I'm pretty sure he's referring to a heart attack, and I'm guessing the analogy refers to that "not liking how something looks" can reflect a more serious underlying cause than pure aesthetic distaste.
Pigeon
coo coo
18d ago
Maybe the languages/culture are to different. Maybe the style of translation differs, and Chinese translators mostly refuse to translate in a free/dynamic equivalence style.
Speaking purely for myself here...
I find eloquent works, composed by a speaker fluent in the style of high-register inspired by classical Chinese, to be very difficult to translate to English. It's somewhat difficult to explain, but Chinese has this relatively unique quality where the old prestige language is both very terse and very prone to historical references/idioms/poetic allusions/metaphors/etc... . That literary Chinese has such a different sort of rhythm to literary English doesn't help matters, either.
This leads to a situation where both literal and free translations of compositions that draws from these classical elements often loses both some nuance and undertones of the original phrasing (if the translator isn't incredibly liberal with their word count), and almost always loses the lyrical quality of the text.
We see this classical influence in the language even for more low-brow settings, as well. Here is a youtube video by a Taiwanese youtuber about "cabbage in boiling water", a soup with a misleading name; the speech is clearly in the vernacular, however you can hear in many sections a rather poetic, almost a sing-song quality to the sentence composition and the use of rather extravagant -- for English standards -- use of flowery language that nonetheless feels perfectly at home.
That should be Iemitsu if you are looking for whoever enacted sakkoku.
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