Language

  • Nanny meets fascism

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Politics, Social Media

    In 1964, Walt Disney released Mary Poppins starring Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke, the man with the worst Cockney accent ever to be recorded for release on celluloid.

    One of the film’s biggest song and dance tunes was a catchy little number sung by the two stars and entitled “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious“.


    According to the song’s Wikipedia page, songwriters the Sherman Brothers have given several conflicting explanations for the word’s origin, in one instance claiming to have coined it themselves, based on their memories of having created double-talk words as children. At another time they are on record as having written the following:

    When we were little boys in the mid-1930s, we went to a summer camp in the Adirondack Mountains, where we were introduced to a very long word that had been passed down in many variations through many generations of kids. … The word as we first hear it was super-cadja-flawjalistic-espealedojus.

    Scroll forward sixty-one years from Mary Poppins on the silver screen and Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious has become part of the English language.

    Furthermore, as my social media timeline this week has revealed, the word itself has been parodied and used as a pun in connection with one person in particular, the disgraced 47th and 45th president of the United States, insurrectionist, convicted felon, adjudicated sexual predator, business fraudster, congenital liar and golf cheat commonly known as Donald John Trump, who is currently dealing enthusiastically and vindictively with punishing political opponents, as well as dismantling the federal government as part of his mission to Make America Grate Again (or something like that. Ed.)

    Cardboard sign bearing the handwritten slogan Super Callous Fragile Racist Sexist Nazi Potus
    Sounds about right!

  • OpenAI, an irony-free company

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Tech

    AI, we keep being told is the next big thing in the wonderful world of information technology. So far most AIs out in the wild have been developed at great expense and require vast amounts of electricity to work.

    Until now.

    DeepSeek logoIn the last week or so the AI world has been shaken by the latest version of DeepSeek, an AI developed by the Chinese.

    The latest version of Deepseek (R1) provides responses comparable to other contemporary LLMs, such OpenAI’s GPT-4o and o1 despite being trained at a significantly lower cost—stated at US$6 mn. compared with $100 mn. for OpenAI’s GPT-4 in 2023. Furthermore, Deepseek only requires one-tenth of the computing power of a comparable LLM. This caused a 17% drop in the share price of Nvidia, the main supplier of AI hardware.

    However, DeepSeek is not without its limitations. As The Guardian found out, the DeepSeek chatbot becomes very taciturn and tongue-tied when asked questions which the Chinese government finds sensitive. When asked the following questions, the AI assistant responded: “Sorry, that’s beyond my current scope. Let’s talk about something else.”

    In addition, DeepSeek and other Chinese generative AI must not contain content that violates the country’s “core socialist values”, that “incites to subvert state power and overthrow the socialist system” or “endangers national security and interests and damages the national image”.

    Besides its reluctance to answer questions the Chinese government doesn’t like, there’s another problem for DeepSeek – plagiarism.

    OpenAI logoThe BBC reports that OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, has accused DeepSeek and others using its work to make rapid advances in developing their own AI tools.

    The fact that OpenAI is accusing others of plagiarising its work shows the company does not understand or admit either irony or hypocrisy as the company’s own LLM has been trained to some extent on material that infringes others’ copyright. The use of copyrighted materials for training LLMs is a topic that has also exercised German-speaking literary translators (posts passim).

    Some companies clearly think ethics is a county with a speech defect in south-east England and that all is fair not just in love and war, but in business too.

  • Rachel buys magic beans

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Politics

    The 1734 tale of “The Story of Jack Spriggins and the Enchanted Bean“, better known nowadays as “The History of Jack and the Bean-Stalk” in the version published in 1807, all hinges on Jack, the poor country boy and the hero of the story swapping the family cow at market for a handful of magic beans, much to the dismay of his mother.

    Official portrait of Rachel Reeves. Any resemblance to a competent economist is purely coincidentalWhat has a fairy tale about gullibility have to do with the current the Chancellor of the Exchequer, one Rachel Jane Reeves, who despite her qualifications from New College, Oxford (PPE) and the London School of Economics (doctorate in economics) appears to suffer from the same ailment as young Jack?

    Well, Ms Reeves seems to have been sold a complete fantasy by her civil service minders in the advice given to her in respect of her proposed announcement later this week of a third runway at London’s Heathrow airport to counter any opposition, as reported yesterday in The Times.

    The proposals for a third runaway at the capital’s main airport have long been a source of opposition and the latest incarnation thereof has drawn opposition from Energy Secretary Ed Miliband, London mayor Sadiq Khan and local London MPs Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith and Chiswick), Fleur Anderson (Putney), Marsha de Cordova (Battersea), John McDonnell (Hayes & Harlington) and Ruth Cadbury (Brentford & Isleworth).

    And the complete fantasy bought by Ms Reeves? As justification for airport expansion, she is on record as saying the third runaway is justified because of recent aviation fuel innovations.

    “Sustainable aviation fuel is changing carbon emissions from flying.”

    The only drawback to her argument is that there is, of course, no such thing as sustainable aviation fuel. As reported by The Guardian in 2024, a paper on sustainable jet fuels from the Institute for Policy Studies found that expectations for these were not realistic. Chuck Collins, co-author of the report remarked as follows:

    To bring these fuels to the scale needed would require massive subsidies, the trade-offs would be unacceptable and would take resources aware from more urgent decarbonization priorities.

    It’s a huge greenwashing exercise by the aviation industry. It’s magical thinking that they will be able to do this.

    A further study by The Royal Society in 2023 found that over half of the UK’s agricultural land would be needed to produce biofuel to meet the country’s existing aviation fuel demand.

    Not only is Ms Reeves indulging in greenwashing, there's an accusation of hypocrisy on the charge sheet too. She was prepared to argue against the expansion of Leeds Bradford airport near her Yorkshire constituency due to concerns about air and noise pollution.

    As The Times piece helpfully points out:

    In 2020, Reeves objected to a new terminal for the Leeds Bradford airport near her constituency, arguing that it “would significantly increase air and noise pollution” and “undermine vital efforts to ensure that Leeds upholds its commitment to become a carbon neutral city by 2030.”

  • Liability lost in translation

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Oddities, Social Media

    As this blog has pointed out previously (posts passim), it is not unusual for bilingual signage to have text that tells the speakers of one language one thing and those of the other language something completely different.

    The bad advice given can cover such varied topics as how far one has to travel to legal liability for loss of or damage to private property.

    The latter is the subject of a photograph which appeared in your ‘umble scribe’s social media feed this morning and concerns legal liability at an unknown railway station operated by Trafnidiaeth Cymru, also known as Transport for Wales.

    Welsh text = You can leave your bike here for free, but at your own risk. English text - Bicycles may be left here free of charge but at our risk

    In translation, the Welsh text on the sign reads:

    You can leave your bike here for free, but at your own risk

    On the other hand, the English text reads:

    Bicycles may be left here free of charge but at our risk

    Judging by the patina on the sign, it’s been there a long time and somebody has yet to take the railway company to court to determine exactly where legal liability lies given the sign’s bilingual ambiguity.

    Your correspondent wonders how many of these confusing signs have been installed across Cymru.

  • More than 60 academic institutions quit X

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Politics, Social Media, Tech, Uncategorized

    German emergency exit signMore than 60 German and Austrian universities and research institutions wanted to set an example and collectively announced that they were ceasing their activities on the X social media platform, a cesspit of far-right intolerance, ignorance, paranoia, misinformation, flat-out lying, and malicious abuse formerly known as Twitter. This withdrawal is a result of the lack of compatibility between the platform’s current orientation and the core values ​​of the institutions involved: cosmopolitanism, scientific integrity, transparency and democratic discourse.

    The changes to X – from the amplification of right-wing populist content to the restriction of organic reach – make further use untenable for the organisations involved. The institutions’ withdrawal underscores their commitment to fact-based communication and against anti-democratic forces. The values ​​that promote diversity, freedom and science are no longer present on the platform.

    Some institutions which have already ceased their activities on the platform also support the joint appeal, thereby reaffirming the importance of an open and constructive culture of discussion. This decision only affects the X-accounts of the institutions involved and not their communication via other social media channels. In the light of recent events, they will continue to closely monitor the development of the platforms and their algorithms.

    The institutions concerned are as follows:

    • Alanus Hochschule für Kunst und Gesellschaft;
    • Bauhaus-Universität Weimar;
    • Berliner Hochschule für Technik;
    • Brandenburgische Technische Universität Cottbus – Senftenberg;
    • Christian-Albrechts-Universität in Kiel;
    • Deutsche Ornithologische Gesellschaft;
    • Deutsche Sporthochschule, Cologne;
    • Europa-Universität Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder);
    • Fachhochschule Dortmund;
    • FernUniversität in Hagen;
    • Freie Universität Berlin;
    • Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg;
    • Goethe-Universität Frankfurt;
    • HAWK Hochschule für angewandte Wissenschaft und Kunst Hildesheim/Holzminden/Göttingen;
    • Heinrich-Heine-Universität, Düsseldorf;
    • Hochschule Anhalt;
    • Hochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg;
    • Hochschule Darmstadt;
    • Hochschule der Bildenden Künste Saar;
    • Hochschule für Musik und Theater, Hamburg;
    • Hochschule für Philosophie, Munich;
    • Hochschule Furtwangen;
    • Hochschule München;
    • Hochschule Neubrandenburg;
    • Hochschule Osnabrück;
    • Hochschule RheinMain;
    • Hochschule Ruhr West;
    • Hochschule für nachhaltige Entwicklung, Eberswalde;
    • Hochschule für Wirtschaft und Umwelt, Nürtingen-Geislingen;
    • Humboldt-Universität in Berlin;
    • Institut für Vogelforschung;
    • Johannes Gutenberg-Universität, Mainz;
    • Justus-Liebig-Gesellschaft;
    • Justus-Liebig-Universität, Gießen;
    • Katholische Hochschule Nordrhein-Westfalen;
    • Kirchliche Hochschule, Wuppertal;
    • Leibniz-Zentrum für Marine Tropenforschung;
    • Leibniz-Institut für Ostseeforschung Warnemünde;
    • Medizinische Universität Innsbruck;
    • Philipps-Universität Marburg;
    • RWTH Aachen;
    • Technische Hochschule Georg Agricola;
    • Technische Hochschule, Cologne;
    • Technische Universität Braunschweig (Brunswick);
    • Technische Universität Darmstadt;
    • Technische Universität Dresden;
    • Universität Bamberg;
    • Universität Bayreuth;
    • Universität des Saarlandes;
    • Universität der Künste, Berlin;
    • Universität Duisburg-Essen;
    • Universität Erfurt;
    • Universität Greifswald;
    • Universität Heidelberg;
    • Universität Innsbruck;
    • Universität Münster;
    • Universität Potsdam;
    • Universität Siegen;
    • Universität Trier;
    • Universität Ulm;
    • Universität Würzburg;
    • Universität zu Lübeck; and
    • Westsächsische Hochschule, Zwickau.

  • What We Leave Behind

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Oddities, Politics

    Your ‘umble scribe’s recent stay in Sydney coincided with the Sydney Festival, a major arts festival held for three weeks in January every year since its inception in 1977.

    On my penultimate day in Australia your correspondent had arranged to visit the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia and arrived rather early. While waiting to rendezvous, a volunteer for Cave Urban outside a gazebo at Tallawoladah Lawn persuaded yours truly to take part in What We Leave Behind, a participatory event involving lots of split bamboo, market pens and people’s imaginations.

    Leaflet reads WHAT WE LEAVE BEHIND CAVE URBAN Come down to Tallawoladah Lawn outside the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia) to share your messages of hope for our planet. Your written messages will be woven into this stunning bamboo art installation. 8am-7pm daily

    Members of the public were invited to leave messages of hope for the planet on strips of bamboo which are being woven into a structure.

    My positive message: “Let homo sapiens finally live up to its Latin species name“.

  • Stolen!

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Politics

    Sydney Central railway station has many memorials, of which the most prominent is that to railway staff who lost their lives in war. It’s right in the middle of the central concourse up against the back wall.

    However, there is another far less prominent one near the left luggage concession and Platform 1 that commemorates a war of a different kind, a war waged not against an aggressive or hostile foreign power, but on indigenous culture and heritage.

    It’s very simple and consists of a grey metal frame containing a large panel of indigenous artwork and an inscription, as shown in the photograph below.

    Memorial to Stolen Generations at Sydney Central railway station

    It commemorates the Stolen Generations, which Wikipedia describes as “The Stolen Generations (also known as Stolen Children) were the children of Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander descent who were removed from their families by the Australian federal and state government agencies and church missions, under acts of their respective parliaments.

    The wording on the memorial reads:

    Transport for NSW acknowledges Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children were forcibly removed from their families and communities due to past government policies and practices. These children are known as the Stolen Generations. Platform 1 is where these children arrived, were separated from their siblings and sent to institutions throughout the state.

    Some of these children never made it home, living their lives disconnected from their families and communities and not knowing their true heritage.

    This memorial is dedicated to the Stolen Generations and their descendants.

    As stated in the station memorial, this removal was neither voluntary nor peaceful, as illustrated in the artwork entitled The Taking of the Children on the 1999 Great Australian Clock on the Queen Victoria Building (QVB), Sydney, by artist Chris Cooke.

    The Taking of the Children by Chris Cooke

    The stated aim of the so-called “resocialisation” programmes was to improve the integration of Aboriginal people into modern [European-Australian, i.e. white] society. Nevertheless, a recent study conducted in Melbourne reported that there was no tangible improvement in the social position of “removed” Aboriginal people as compared to “non-removed”. In the fields of employment and post-secondary education, the removed children had about the same results as those who were not removed, but caused those involved great mental harm and trauma. A 2019 study by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) found that children living in households with members of the Stolen Generations are more likely “to experience a range of adverse outcomes“, including poor health, especially mental health, missing school and living in poverty. Among the Stolen Generations there are high incidences of anxiety, depression, PTSD and suicide, along with alcohol abuse, with the associated unstable parenting and family situations.

    The federal states of Australia now all have redress and compensation schemes for the victims, but money is no substitute for not having suffered in the first place.

    However, Australia is not the only country invaded by the British where indigenous peoples were maltreated. Similar indignities were suffered by First Nations children in Canada. In what looks like a very similar scheme, residential schools were created to isolate Indigenous children from the influence of their own culture and religion in order to assimilate them into the dominant white Euro-Canadian culture.

    The same pattern can also be seen in Aotearoa (which some still call New Zealand. Ed.) in what Al Jazeera describes as a quiet genocide. More than 100,000 children – mostly indigenous Maori were taken from their parents and placed in state welfare institutions from the 1940s through to the late 1980s.

    If these systems all developed independently, there does seem to be a lot of crossover – one might even say collusion – with trauma and loss of culture and heritage (and sometimes lives. Ed.) as the result.

  • English imperialism alive and well in Australia

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Politics, Social Media

    I’m currently in Australia for my niece’s wedding (which was wonderful, by the way. Ed.).

    This is the first time your ‘umble scribe has been to abroad an Anglophone country. Australia has sensibly adopted the metric system of weights and measures, something the Untied Kingdom has yet to do. In the lengthy deliberations about metrication, it was mooted that conversion of the currency to a decimal system was an essential first step. The UK did adopt decimal currency in 1971, a long time after it had first been proposed in 1824 (separately from the introduction of metrication. Ed.).

    Australia shares an alleged head of state, an unelected monarch, with the UK and this is reflected in currency, with coins showing the head of the Mountbatten-Windsor family, as can be seen from an Australian 50 cents piece.

    Australian 50 cents piece showing the profile of someone who called herself Elizabeth the second
    Elizabeth the what?

    Readers will note that Elizabeth is described as the second of that name by the Roman numerals.

    Your correspondent can’t help asking when were the dates for the reign of Elizabeth the first of Australia (hint: there are none. Ed.).

    On social media, your ‘umble scribe has also had it pointed out to him that within the UK, coins also bore the inscription Elizabeth II, even though someone called Elizabeth has never been crowned as ruler of Scotland, which can be regarded as equally insensitive to Scots and their history.

    But whether in Australia or the small group of islands off the western coast of Europe, it is apparent to all with open eyes – and an open mind – that English imperialism – i.e. a system in which a country rules other countries – is alive and well and likely to continue despite the efforts of the likes of Senator Lidia Thorpe.

  • Idiocy in public office

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Oddities, Politics, Social Media

    There are still over 3 weeks until the disgraced president-elect of the United States, the disgraced former 45th president, insurrectionist, convicted felon, adjudicated sexual predator, business fraudster, congenital liar and golf cheat, one Donald John Trump, (also known as the Felon of the Year. Ed.) is inaugurated for his second term as president of the United States.

    However, that has not stopped the so-called Tangerine Tyrant from upsetting other countries around the world, firstly in respect of trade tariffs and more recently in the field of territorial claims and a revived offer to purchase territory.

    As regards the latter, two instances are prominent: Panama and Greenland.

    As regards the former, Trump is of the opinion that Panama is charging US shipping ridiculous fees to use the Panama Canal, and in his usual bullying and bombastic manner, has threatened to seize control the canal if Panama does not reduce tariffs. Furthermore, he has intimated that China could exert increasing control over the canal. In response, Panama’s president José Raúl Mulino has called the claim of increased Chinese influence ‘nonsense‘.

    Even though the US largely built the canal in 1914 and administered territory – the Panama Canal Zone – either side of the passage for decades, Washington finally handed over full control of the canal to Panama in 1999 under treaties signed two decades earlier by then-US president Jimmy Carter and Panamanian nationalist leader Omar Torrijos.

    When it comes to Greenland, this is a long-term obsession of Trump’s. He first suggested the USA purchase this Danish autonomous territory during his first term pf office and has recently resurrected the idea. The Greenland prime minister has replied by stating categorically that it is not for sale.

    In both his election campaigns, Trump’s leading slogan has been to Make America Grate Again (or something akin thereto. Ed.) and as has been seen above, this has not gone down well outside the 50 states of the Union.

    Moreover, Trump’s bullying tactics have also not gone down well with the more progressive elements of American society, as can be seen by what some individual has done outside the orange one’s eponymous tower in New York.

    Chalk graffito reads Dear Panama and Greenland - Apologies he's an idiot - America

  • Two fingers versus the iron fist

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Politics

    Yesterday Rachel Reeves, a woman whose start-free talents include doing poor chancellor of the exchequer impressions, announced she would use an “iron fist” to squeeze out waste to achieve expenditure savings of 5% in government departments.

    Lisa 'Two Fingers' Nandy, DCMS Secretary of StateHowever, it appears that Ms Reeves’ iron fist has started to show signs of rust and of being ignored by Whitehall departments as the Department for Digital, Culture and Sports (DCMS) has already stuck two fingers up at the chancellor, as shown by revelations concerning its stationery supplies.

    As reported by Scotland’s National today, the DCMS has recently bought two ministerial folders from luxury leather goods manufacturer Barrow Hepburn & Gale at a cost of £594 each. The government is a regular customer of the company, as is the Mountbatten-Windsor family and its hangers-on.

    Nandy’s folders cost a grand total of £1,118. The National helpfully points out that similar leather-bound document holders are available in the House of Commons shop for just £30. The excuse for spending the amount demanded by Barrow Hepburn & Gale is to “enhance“. This enhancement would appear to be at the root of a well-known old adage: a fool and his money are soon parted.

    In a clear case of government by gaslight, a spokesperson has stated it is “entirely focused on ensuring every pound of spending represents the best value for taxpayers, while also increasing investment in our public services and delivering on key growth projects”.