HODGEPODGE NOVEMBER 20

 1. Let's do our gratitude question first this week...what's the best thing about your home, and have you taken time to enjoy it lately? 

I love my room, it's my refuge, and of course I always take time to enjoy my little granny cat.

2. Do you like squash? Of the varieties listed, which one's your favorite and how do you like it prepared? Is squash of some sort on your Thanksgiving menu?? 

acorn, butternut, delicata, spaghetti, zucchini, crookneck (yellow squash), patty pan

I don't celebrate Thanksgiving, because my ancestors didn't emigrate, and from the listed plates I simply like spaghetti with pesto 

3. Last time you were 'squashed in' somewhere, or felt squashed? 

I think it was 3 years ago when I took the plane to  Djerba to try to recover from the stress and Rick's death. The airport was so crowded you couldn't even squeeze a piece of paper between the people. Luckily, I had booked senior assistance, so I only had to stand in the throng for a short time.

4. Have you ever played squash? What about other 'racquet sports' such as racquetball, tennis, pickleball, badminton, table tennis (ping pong)? Are these sports something you enjoy? 

When I was 18 I used to play Tennis, but not so much for the game, but there were nice boys there. Years later I played a bit with Rick and friends, but not for a long time, I loved to play badminton and ping pong. We even play ping pong here on our terrace when the weather is nice.  

5. Something in today's society or culture that feels like a 'racket' to you? If you don't like that one, tell us about a place you've been recently where there was a lot of 'racket'. 

This is difficult to answer. As an adult I lived in Brussels, and at that time it was a very peaceful capital of Belgium, compared to other capitals. Now it's less peaceful, but since Rick's death I haven't been to Brussels, or other cities here. But when I was 22 (in the 60th) I was in Sicily and there the Mafia was everywhere on the island and "ruled" it. At that time I didn't know much about the Mafia, but after reading "The Godfather", I suddenly understood a lot that I hadn't noticed before !Today I think that I was a little too adventurous, even careless. But nobody stopped me, and probably I wouldn't have listened.   

6.  Insert your own random thought here. 

 

A friend's daughter was laid off because of AI. She worked as a translator for a company. Since that was my profession for 40 years, I finally wanted to know what this "AI" actually is. To this day, I still don't understand it, especially not when it comes to translations. When I receive a text to translate, you can't just do it word for word; it has to convey the meaning of the text in the original language, and in such a way that it sounds like it was written by an English, German, Italian, or French person. Just for fun, I once used Google Translate to translate a sentence from German into French, then into Italian, and finally into English. The sentence, "I'm sitting at my computer and my cat is watching me," turned out to mean that my cat was sitting at the computer and I was watching. Of course, I had a good laugh.

 

Therefore translations should still be checked  by "human intelligence" to avoid sometimes terrible mistakes. For example, during the American occupation of Germany, the population wanted Kornmehl (grain flour) for baking bread. Korn in German means "grain," but the translator translated Korn as corn, so the poor people received maize flour and had to bake yellow bread. One small word can change everything. Another example is the bible, which had been translated into over 2000 languages. 

 

The first Bible was not written in a single language, the Old Testament was written primarily in Hebrew, with some passages in Aramaic, while the New Testament was written in Koine Greek. Therefore, the original "Bible" was a collection of texts compiled over centuries, with these three ancient languages being the ones used by the original authors. 

Probably some translators let their imagination run wild, during the centuries and /or invented laws that never existed. But who's going to check that today ? Certainly not AI.

 

To be honest I am still not knowing exactly the meaning of AI (in English) KI (in German), and IA (in French)  !