Odin vs Full-Size Dinner Plate

My corporate overlord made me take a new AI phishing awareness training, and overall it wasn't terrible, but it suddenly sprang on me that it wanted me to turn on the microphone and interact out loud with some sort of toy simulated scam call. This made me INCREDIBLY uncomfortable.

Not sure if it was gonna use voice recognition + LLM or if it was scripted kayfabe, but I blocked the microphone permission and it gave me a little button in the corner to move forward if I was having "technical problems". I was having social problems, but yeah, thanks

@Rairii just for you, here is someone in the Analects of Confucius saying they need a group of "six, seven boys" to hold a party of sufficient mirth

Here is a translation note I wrote just now while working on the Annals of Yanzi, because it's informative on its own:

“Three thousand servants, three girlfriends and four ministers” isn’t necessarily meant to be taken as those exact numbers, but can stand for “a few thousand, a few, several” in the same way that we say “a couple” to mean not necessarily exactly two but definitely more than one.

This is because there is no grammatical singular/plural distinction in Classical Chinese, so you just throw out a keyword that gives the ballpark size and move on. They will often give a range to indicate the non-literal nature, such as saying “five, six colors” to mean “many colors.” Keep this in mind when trying to do math with numbers given in ancient sources!

#classicalchinese #translation

Two things:

1) those “Dobby’s Grave” headlines were ragebait that vastly exaggerated the issue. You are not immune to propaganda meant to get you yelling at Kids These Days as if they’re the problem

2) “read another book” I have an explicitly trans-positive suggestion https://0xabad1dea.itch.io/glory-in-the-thunder-act-1

568) Bibot. Swings into action to correct misconceptions about bisexuality. No, it's not a phase. Yes, you're "still bi" in a monogamous relationship. No, it doesn't exclude gender-non-conforming people. Then swings away again. #SmallRobotsRemastered

I got attacked by the dreaded Hugs Monster in a dark hallway and my husband had to come to my rescue

I’m still under siege. The Hugs Monster has tried to smother me four times since I started this post.

A boy who is waiting to see some hardcore classic Fire Emblem action

I am here to report that Odin just startled himself by accidentally slamming his enormous rear end into the furniture while trying to sit. He looked truly perplexed

I'm now imagining a whole pantheon that you have to proactively invoke for different flaws that you know your code contains. Athena forgives this lack of wisdom. Thor forgives this waste of electricity. Shennong forgives this lack of test coverage

@0xabad1dea I am still quietly judging, though.

Came across some code which is subjected to a complexity analysis tool; the tool, called "lizard", has a specific annotation you can add in a comment to request it skip a function, which results in a rather alarming line of code without knowing that context:

// #​​​lizard forgives

@david_chisnall it took Odin a long time to understand aggression as distinct from play, and he still politely ignores it in most dogs. There’s mainly just one dog, a hunting dog that’s been traumatized, that he growls back at; I think he figured out after a few ugly encounters that this dog will try to genuinely hurt him if he doesn’t proactively discourage them

(This dog’s human is a lovely, kind old man, who didn’t hurt the dog and wishes they would learn to tolerate Odin.)

there's a new German Shepherd puppy in the building named Ace. The plan is to slowly acclimate Ace to Odin so that he knows Odin also just lives here and nobody needs to be protected from him

They've yet to make nose contact, but Odin was a very good boy about sitting still and wagging his tail while a puppy barked at him from one meter away

me: Odin, hold still, mommy needs to purge these filthy impurities from you for your own good

me: oh my gods it's true, I've become my mother

I had to make a relationship chart of Yanzi’s favorite historical guys to bring up when dunking on his pet fail-dukes. I’m sure it will expand onto second and third post-it notes…

And yes, there’s Zhou (dynasty, presumed good) and Zhou (guy, total fuckup)

#classicalchinese #translation #philosophy

@batterpunts so, I 100% did not make up the Horse-Ass Zhou thing, but obviously that's not the name his mother gave him

In ancient China, dead rulers typically got awarded "posthumous names" that were along the lines of The Cultured, The Martial, The Wise, etc etc. It was polite to refer to them with this name afterwards, so they're often most famous in history under these posthumous names.

This guy was... unpopular, let's put it that way. It's entirely likely the tales of his shocking cruelty and ridiculous excesses were exaggerated to justify overthrowing him, as was already acknowledged in very ancient sources, but in any case, he is the standard reference Bad King that it was socially acceptable to criticize without implying that kings/emperors in general are bad. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Di_Xin

The first anecdote of Our Boy Yanzi, which I translated just now, is not one of the funnier stories; but it may be funnier if I preface that the duke in this story (who is not even the drunkest duke!) gets assassinated afterwards because he tried to bang his own kingmaker's wife.

OUR BOY YANZI (The Annals of Yanzi), Book 1 Chapter 1, Anecdote A: Duke Zhuang Brags Of Strength While Ignoring Justice; Yanzi Tells Him Off

Duke Zhuang boasted of his strength and manly courage, but did not give much thought to justice and good conduct. Warriors did whatever they wanted throughout the land, the Duke’s family did not correct him, and his most trusted ministers did not advise him. So, Yanzi showed up.

The Duke said, “Didn’t the ancients also rule the world by courage and strength?”

Yanzi told him, “I have heard that someone who would rather die than act uncivilized is courageous, and one who unflinchingly opposes cruelty is strong. Therefore, the way to be courageous and strong is to first be civilized and just. There have been heroes in the past, like the founders of the Shang and Zhou dynasties, who raised armies without traitorous intent. They unified nations not for their own gain, but for the sake of humanity and justice. To oppose cruelty and arrest criminals without fear of reprisal, that’s real courage.”

“Ancient heroes were civilized and just. But nowadays, the rulers are inhumane and their servants do not punish criminals or prevent cruelty. They rule by strength alone, leading the nation into disaster. The common people follow and destroy their own families.”

“As the Xia Dynasty waned, there were many men who were strong. They could run a thousand miles, they could wrangle a rhinoceros and tear a tiger in half. They terrorized the whole world with their strength, murdering the innocent. Praising strength, neglecting justice, this culminated in the reigns of Jie the Cruel and Horse-Ass Zhou, the worst kings to ever rule, and the downfall of their dynasties.”

“So now you’re bragging about how strong you are, you’re neglecting justice, warriors are running loose, might is making right, your family isn’t pulling you aside and your ministers aren’t standing up to you; you’re doing everything that virtuous sage-kings didn’t and everything that disastrous fail-kings did. Can’t say I’ve ever heard of that working out.”

#classicalchinese #translation #philosophy

@gbargoud I want to translate all of these and many others! 😂 , the issue is that I'm scatterbrained about it and need a push to lock in on just one

what would YOU prefer I focus my Classical Chinese translation time on? (Anything I translate will be free to read and in a modern, non-hyper-literal style)

1) finish the Analects of Confucius, of which there are already three chapters; there are already many translations of this, mine is just, well, internet-flavored https://xn--hmr.net/classicalchinese/analects/

2) the Salt and Iron Concords - a transcript of a bunch of guys around a table arguing economic policy over 2000 years ago, because the emperor is too dead to be offended if they disagree out loud with him; largely falls along "the virtue of the self-sufficient household" vs "the practicality of industrialization and specialization" lines

3) Our Boy Yanzi (The Annals of Yanzi), the legend of ancient China's shortest, ugliest philosopher constantly telling off the drunkest duke for being the worst

#classicalchinese #translation #philosophy