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LWI: Bonjou, ti dam. Ki jan ou ye?

MARI: M' byen, wi.

LWI: Se pitit-ou?

MARI: Wi se pitit-mwen.

LWI: Ki jan li rele?

MARI: Li rele Sadrak.

LWI: M' rele Lwi. E ou-menm, ki jan ou rele?

MARI: M' rele Mari.

Few today would challenge the notion that the Haitian Creole is a language in its own right, and although its vocabulary is indeed about 90% French-based, that it is neither a pidginized nor a derivative form of French.

Vet du hur många hjälporganisationer det finns i Haiti? Flera tusen, som åstadkommer just ingenting. Men en sak är dom helvetes bra på: att tala om för oss haitier vad vi ska ha för tro! Luther lärjungar förökar sig som råttor här, och deras främsta hatobjekt är vodoun. Inte orättvisa eller vår kära lilla överklass som har allt och gärna vill ha mer, utan vår tro, människornas tro.

- Bonswa mam, beswen de chanm yo pou you nui, sople.

Det var inga ord hon kände igen, det måste vara kreol. Hittills hade hon känt sig trygg med sin franska, men hur skulle hon göra sig förstådd på det här språket?

[Jag gissar att det ska vara "Bonsoir madame, besoin de chambre une pour la nuit, s'il vous plaît"]

Pappa pratade alltid om "oron" som en liten motor som satt i henne. Det var först när hon blev äldre att hon förstod att denna "oro" var ett begrepp bland urmakare, själva hjärta i en mekanisk klocka. Det var ett vackert ord, men i dagens digitala värld fanns det inte mer. Ingen visste längre vad det hade för betydelse.

We are creating a non-biological form of intelligence that, at its seed, is a replica of the masculine geek mind. In its infancy it is being assigned the mission of enabling the capitalist, imperialist ambitions of the few - selling, spying, killing and gambling.

It's interesting to compare this book with If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies. Despite the fact that Gawdat is writing several years earlier, he strikes me as much more in touch with the realities of the situation: it's too late to stop superintelligence from happening, a capitalist society doesn't work that way. Our only option is to figure out how to deal with it.

I was wondering if this book would be hopelessly out of date (it came out before the release of ChatGPT-3.5), but so far I don't get that impression. He makes a strong case for superintelligence in the next few years and keeps reminding us that we always underestimate exponential growth.

He says the second half of the book will say what we can do about it. I'm curious, seems impossible given the build-up.

The author's fact-checking is amazingly sloppy. 60 pages in, I've been told that AIs play all games better than humans (maybe Bill Gates could explain bridge to him sometime), that R2-D2 never actually does anything in Star Wars (doesn't he remember the ending of the original movie?) and that the showdown between Bowman and HAL in 2001 occurs "in the far reaches of the Galaxy" (in fact near Jupiter).

Useful advice on how to be gang-raped. Instead of "Lie back and enjoy it" (well past use-by date), Despentes more practically suggests "Lie back and do what you can to increase the likelihood that they don't also kill you".

Mon dieu, this book certainly doesn't waste any time getting started.

We recently watched the 2022 movie version, so I thought I would reread the original. Surely that many things couldn't have been changed?

No doubt people will say I'm sexist, ageist and nationalist. But if you're going to film a book set in a 1930s German boy's boarding school, why would you ask a young Swedish woman to direct it?! This just doesn't make sense.

Une femme de trente-cinq ans, à l'âge des grandes passions violentes, qui conserverait seulement un rien de la mièvrerie caressante de ses amours de vingt ans, qui ne comprendrait pas qu'elle doit s'exprimer autrement, embrasser autrement, qu'elle doit être une Didon et non plus une Juliette, écœurerait infailliblement neuf amants sur dix, même s'ils ne se rendent compte des raisons de leur éloignement.

Elle appelait le premier le « Capitaine Fracasse » et le second « Mouton Fidèle »; elle finit par faire de celui-ci une sorte d'esclave attaché à ses pas, dont elle usait comme d'un domestique.

Elle eût bien ri si on lui eût dit qu'elle l'aimait.

As with every time I read Maupassant, I have trouble accepting the fact that this was apparently written by a man. ChatGPT-5.5 suggests that his mother was a strong formative influence, and that "fuck the Patriarchy" might be rendered into late nineteenth century French as "À bas la tyrannie des hommes !" or "Qu’ils aillent se faire foutre, tous ces messieurs !"

Usually I avoid reading books in translation when I have any chance of being able to read them in the original, but I thought this would be an exception since Beckett translated it himself. I must admit I'm starting to wonder. The book is so extremely Irish, and rendering it into fanciful inventive French is more than a little disorienting. Though perhaps that's the point?

- Mais trahis-moi, dit Neary, et tu finiras comme finit Hippasos.

- L'Acousmatique, je présume, dit Wylie. Sa rétribution m'échappe pour l'instant.

- Noyé dans un égout, dit Neary, pour avoir divulgué l'incommensurabilité du côté avec la diagonale.

- Ainsi périsse tout babillard, dit Wylie.

Etant enfin arrivé à libérer une main, il saisit le récepteur, qu'au lieu de jeter par terre pourtant, il porta à son oreille, tant il était agité.

- Que le diable vous emporte ! dit-il.

- Il est en train de le faire, dit-elle.

Célia.

They sang, screaming, 'A ken't get, nö, zetizfektion'.

I'm amazed that the authorities let them get away with the Stones' 'Satisfaction', a song which, if it became an anthem for desire of all kinds in the west, was bound to become a rallying cry against the whole system in the east. 'Did they know what it meant?' I asked.

'We didn't know what it meant,' Klaus laughs.

He can switch from one view to another with frightening ease. I think it is a sign of being accustomed to such power that the truth does not matter because you cannot be contradicted.

'I would like to see your ID card,' he says.

'I don't have one.'

'What do you mean?' he asks.

'In Australia we don't have ID cards.'

He is speechless. He looks at me as though all his suspicions are confirmed: I come from a place so remote, so primitive that the people there have not yet been labelled and numbered.

Hand i hand går de in i hennes rum och i hennes säng med de redan skrynkliga linnelakanen. Där älskar Skord Xenia som laxen hoppar i forsen, starkt och vilt fast han har vita lockar. Och Xenia älskar Skord som tornsvalan när hon dyker i blå luft och aldrig ska behöva nudda vid marken mer i hela sitt liv. De älskar varandra som roslingen och björnmossan när de flätar sig in i varandra, utan ändamål, utan avsikt.

Jag sa åt honom att det vore säkrare att bygga detta Helvete med ord, kanske Paradiset också och jag erbjöd mig att hjälpa till. En Prolog, ett Ode, ett sagospel för röster med musik. Ord är oomkullrunkeliga. De står. Men marmorkyrkor ramlar till slut lika säkert som papptempel och lerhyddor med halmtak. Och ofta för ett ord förresten.

- Skit, sa han i stället. Allting är skit. Det som inte är skit blir det. Vet du vad jag trodde att jag hade kommit i världen för att finns hemligheter och priser dem? Jag trodde att det som bultade i mitt bröst och som flämtade i stjärnorna och prasslade i gräset var hemligheter. Gud hade lagt dem där.

Han kände hat. Utan att öppna munnen talade han till henne. Han sa något som inte var sant men som en gång skulle bli det.

De är döda, sa han. Det är slut med dem. Gräset är nertrampat och avbränt. Men det ska växa upp nytt gräs. Genom golvet ska det också växa. Det ska bända upp katedralens golvstenar. Trä ska multna och murar vittra sönder i regnet. Korset ska falla, galgarna, steglarna, hjulen. De ska multna.

- Fick du min gåva? frågade gästen plötsligt. Bosen reste sig mödosamt, föll på knä och kysste sin hand.

- Illustrissime!

Den upphöjde avfärdade hans ödmjukhet med en mjuk och nästan retsam rörelse. Och detta skulle de ofta se när de lärde känna honom: han föraktade hyllningar och ärebetygelser. Men när de uteblev kom det ett skarpt och irriterat drag kring hans mun.

"Individuals should always wonder who wrote the software running in their heads," Musk commented. "Most humans have very limited firewalls," he elaborated elsewhere, "so are easily reprogrammed".

Musk's approach assumed that all expenditures were waste, and that bad data - whether fraudulent contracts, useless staff, or illegitimate people - could simply be deleted. What DOGE sought to automate, media researcher Eryk Salvaggio noted, was "not paperwork but democratic decision-making". Efficiency became the alibi for centralisation.

Musk understood empathy itself in coding terms. It was an "exploit" or a software vulnerability against which the system architecture needed to be hardened.

After acquiring Twitter, Musk laid off nearly 80% of its staff and forced the remaining employees to work harder. Meanwhile, he pushed the platform's content to the right. If the social network was an "information weapon", why not wield it against his enemies? To fight wokeness, Musk would develop a new pathogen, propagated through a cascade of counter-memes: the anti-woke mind virus.