[Krong Buk, Vietnam on 3/25/19] Yesterday in Pakse, I lived indulgently, luxuriously and, I must admit, rather obscenely. I ate too well. No man, though, can be expected to survive on dog tails, chicken testicles and snail earlobes alone. Every so often, he must avail himself to the best of what the gods make available.
My take is that you mentioned doing something obscenely. Google/AI is a bit simple minded? Couldn't make it the end of the paragraph or even sentence? The mind doesn't boggle any more because that would be way to complicated so just stalls.
Thanks to the much-hyped but useless AI, now anything you post at Google/Fakebook/Twitter etc is preemptively blocked with flags or warnings. AI is not very smart, but it's so "sensitive" that even a word in the wrong place can trigger it. Worse than the worst human snowflakes. I had videos in Youtube deleted because they had "9/11" and "fake" in their title, and posts in social media stamped with the ubiquitous "misinformation" warnings because they dared to mention the word "vaccine".
As I mentioned somewhere else, a friend typed the word "killer" as a prompt for a short story in one of those ChatGPT things, only to be informed that the bot does not condone violence and thus could not create any story with that word. Meanwhile, on the sidebar, the search engine that promotes that same bot was showing images of the latest kindergarten stabbing atrocity. Such are the times we live in.
Incredible. I can't find a single thing in this entire post that would offend even the most sensitive person (and let's face it--there are a lot of them out there!). Perhaps some goofy AI tool flagged it because of the title? If so, I'd say we're getting a bit over-reactive there, ya think?
"Hi Thorsten, warning is at my blog, not here. SubStack is last free zone.--Linh"
Google censors SubStack posts that are flagged by Google's algorithms, at least in my case. Not all posts, but some. Gonna test it again, soon. Will post about who owns the toy industry and the superhero franchise and Artificial Intelligence.
If SubStack doesn't flag content, there is hope indeed. But not too fast. In the EU, social media are already flagging content retroactively. So censorship laws in the future will affect content from the past, haha! 🤣
All this safety nonsense is because of women. Women prioritize safety over freedom. Women don't want their feelings to be hurt, don't want to be critized and don't even want to see or hear things they don't want to see or hear.
In a corporation they go to HR. Online they just implement censorship of anything they don't like or think might in any way make a woman sad.
There is no going back to the early free-for-all male days of the internet.
It could be the title. It implies a rejection of the "Great Reset"-Rockefeller-Malthusean population culling agenda. Even sounds pretty Catholic. And we know the Feds are hunting Catholics at the behest of the same chosen people who get to decide what can and can't be said on the internet.
I suppose everyone gets a giggle reading an attempt at communication from someone who cannot fluently speak the reader's language; those menus are a great example. But I have bad news, though it is no news to you - basic writing competency in the USA is dying, even in the "prestige" publications. By "competency" I do not mean a Mark Twain-ish ability to turn a phrase. I mean this - skim through high-prestige mass media and see how many times a simple plural is turned into a possessive, like "the missile's are positioned facing Europe". Those kinds of mistakes, unheard of in the past, are commonplace today.
If you see a comma in something I wrote rest assured Quillbot put it there. Apparently I don't use them so therefor some of what I write is artificial intelligence. This comment is purely me though.
First commenting. Then making coffee. Spiritually preparing for the Third World Treat. The 'sensibility warning' sign you mentioned above in the comment section, I did not encounter. So you must have modified the content accordingly? 🌏😂👍🏻
Truly a day in foodie heaven, from your report. BTW, breakfast is my favorite meal, and the photo of the Cape Town breakfast looks like it’s right up my alley. I still remember Wonder Bread, but I thought it helped build strong bodies TWELVE ways, who knows? Hey, even Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs can be “part of a balanced breakfast” if we believe the TV commercials.
The lack of native English proofreading is certainly not limited to restaurant menus. I see it all the time in the printed directions accompanying a lot of the (mostly cheaper) stuff that gets exported to the US, and I’ve had thoughts similar to yours—“You spent all the money to get this in production and shipped halfway around the world, and you still couldn’t pop for 15 minutes of a native English speaker’s time to clean up the instructions?” Although the good news, I guess, is that these mis-translations and grammar boo-boos can sometimes be a source of amusement for those of us on the receiving end.
The names that some restaurants in Asia use on their menus for certain dishes can make stuff sound pretty disgusting. I think that rather than bad translations, they tend to be correct but too literal. My memory is not perfect here, but tangled up with the Norman invasion of England and the changes to the language, English adopted different word for certain animals and the meat from those animals. So we eat “beef” rather than “cow”, “pork” rather than “pig”, and even “mutton” or “lamb” instead of “sheep.” (At least the fowls and fishes managed to survive with their names intact.) I guess our sensibilities about what we are eating followed along with the language.
I remember the time my wife and I perused the menu outside a very nice Taipei restaurant, and one of their signature dishes was “Bull penis and testicles”. I guess here we would leave the penis aside and call what was left “Rocky Mountain oysters.” I never considered my father a finicky eater, but I noticed that he always avoided eating anything from the animal kingdom that was too suggestive of its origins. So lobster and whole fish were definitely out, and he didn’t want to hear any details about the stuff that was left. Pretty strange considering that he actually grew up on a Depression-era farm.
Regarding ball parks, I’ve been to probably a dozen all over the country, but the last one I remember visiting was Camden Yards in Baltimore, probably 15 years ago. Very nice park, but I’m not sure I’d risk it any more. But as much as we talk about the rough neighborhoods, even back in the late 60s, my dad never wanted me going down to the old Comiskey Park to a White Sox game on Chicago’s south side because he said it was too unsafe. We lived down there when I was a toddler and he was going to college, and he had a few scary street experiences.
This post is making me hungry and the only cook is me, who has clocked off. Out of curiosity I googled Que Huong Melbourne (although I am far beyond the reach of Uber food drivers). As you said, there were lots of Que Huongs and even more Quoc Huongs in and around Melbourne. I think I will go to bed and hope to dream about a cafe called Que Huong opening up next door and inviting me in with its aromas, a sign saying: all you can eat for 50 cents. Thanks Linh for another slice of life somewhere else. We have had temperatures as high sometimes in the summer here, or even in the desert valley in Canada where I was raised, but always with very, very low humidity so hard to imagine what you are experiencing.
Hi everyone,
Within seconds of publishing this at my blog, it was flagged, so Google didn't even bother to read it. Its message:
Hello,
As you may know, our Community Guidelines
(https://blogger.com/go/contentpolicy) describe the boundaries for what we
allow-- and don't allow-- on Blogger. Your post titled "Table For Eight
Billion" was flagged to us for review. This post was put behind a warning
for readers because it contains sensitive content; the post is visible at
http://linhdinhphotos.blogspot.com/2023/05/table-for-eight-billion.html
Your blog readers must acknowledge the warning before being able to read
the post/blog.
We apply warning messages to posts that contain sensitive content. If
you are interested in having the status reviewed, please update the content
to adhere to Blogger's Community Guidelines. Once the content is updated,
you may republish it at
https://www.blogger.com/go/appeal-post?blogId=4284893230469697578&postId=7573324951425143205.
This will trigger a review of the post.
Hi everyone,
At my blog, a reader suggests this sentence may have triggered Google, "I’ll order that when I feel like committing suicide."
What a relief! I can still retire in Israel!
Linh
My take is that you mentioned doing something obscenely. Google/AI is a bit simple minded? Couldn't make it the end of the paragraph or even sentence? The mind doesn't boggle any more because that would be way to complicated so just stalls.
Hi Isha, trigger culture is ruining reading, thinking and literature.--Linh
Thanks to the much-hyped but useless AI, now anything you post at Google/Fakebook/Twitter etc is preemptively blocked with flags or warnings. AI is not very smart, but it's so "sensitive" that even a word in the wrong place can trigger it. Worse than the worst human snowflakes. I had videos in Youtube deleted because they had "9/11" and "fake" in their title, and posts in social media stamped with the ubiquitous "misinformation" warnings because they dared to mention the word "vaccine".
As I mentioned somewhere else, a friend typed the word "killer" as a prompt for a short story in one of those ChatGPT things, only to be informed that the bot does not condone violence and thus could not create any story with that word. Meanwhile, on the sidebar, the search engine that promotes that same bot was showing images of the latest kindergarten stabbing atrocity. Such are the times we live in.
Incredible. I can't find a single thing in this entire post that would offend even the most sensitive person (and let's face it--there are a lot of them out there!). Perhaps some goofy AI tool flagged it because of the title? If so, I'd say we're getting a bit over-reactive there, ya think?
"Hi Thorsten, warning is at my blog, not here. SubStack is last free zone.--Linh"
Google censors SubStack posts that are flagged by Google's algorithms, at least in my case. Not all posts, but some. Gonna test it again, soon. Will post about who owns the toy industry and the superhero franchise and Artificial Intelligence.
If SubStack doesn't flag content, there is hope indeed. But not too fast. In the EU, social media are already flagging content retroactively. So censorship laws in the future will affect content from the past, haha! 🤣
All this safety nonsense is because of women. Women prioritize safety over freedom. Women don't want their feelings to be hurt, don't want to be critized and don't even want to see or hear things they don't want to see or hear.
In a corporation they go to HR. Online they just implement censorship of anything they don't like or think might in any way make a woman sad.
There is no going back to the early free-for-all male days of the internet.
It could be the title. It implies a rejection of the "Great Reset"-Rockefeller-Malthusean population culling agenda. Even sounds pretty Catholic. And we know the Feds are hunting Catholics at the behest of the same chosen people who get to decide what can and can't be said on the internet.
Hi Linh,
I suppose everyone gets a giggle reading an attempt at communication from someone who cannot fluently speak the reader's language; those menus are a great example. But I have bad news, though it is no news to you - basic writing competency in the USA is dying, even in the "prestige" publications. By "competency" I do not mean a Mark Twain-ish ability to turn a phrase. I mean this - skim through high-prestige mass media and see how many times a simple plural is turned into a possessive, like "the missile's are positioned facing Europe". Those kinds of mistakes, unheard of in the past, are commonplace today.
If you see a comma in something I wrote rest assured Quillbot put it there. Apparently I don't use them so therefor some of what I write is artificial intelligence. This comment is purely me though.
Thank you, Linh Dinh, for another entertaining narrative of your daily adventures.
Like it. Especially the pictures of the various plates at the end. You're living large, Linh. And more power to ya for it.
First commenting. Then making coffee. Spiritually preparing for the Third World Treat. The 'sensibility warning' sign you mentioned above in the comment section, I did not encounter. So you must have modified the content accordingly? 🌏😂👍🏻
Hi Thorsten, warning is at my blog, not here. SubStack is last free zone.--Linh
Truly a day in foodie heaven, from your report. BTW, breakfast is my favorite meal, and the photo of the Cape Town breakfast looks like it’s right up my alley. I still remember Wonder Bread, but I thought it helped build strong bodies TWELVE ways, who knows? Hey, even Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs can be “part of a balanced breakfast” if we believe the TV commercials.
The lack of native English proofreading is certainly not limited to restaurant menus. I see it all the time in the printed directions accompanying a lot of the (mostly cheaper) stuff that gets exported to the US, and I’ve had thoughts similar to yours—“You spent all the money to get this in production and shipped halfway around the world, and you still couldn’t pop for 15 minutes of a native English speaker’s time to clean up the instructions?” Although the good news, I guess, is that these mis-translations and grammar boo-boos can sometimes be a source of amusement for those of us on the receiving end.
The names that some restaurants in Asia use on their menus for certain dishes can make stuff sound pretty disgusting. I think that rather than bad translations, they tend to be correct but too literal. My memory is not perfect here, but tangled up with the Norman invasion of England and the changes to the language, English adopted different word for certain animals and the meat from those animals. So we eat “beef” rather than “cow”, “pork” rather than “pig”, and even “mutton” or “lamb” instead of “sheep.” (At least the fowls and fishes managed to survive with their names intact.) I guess our sensibilities about what we are eating followed along with the language.
I remember the time my wife and I perused the menu outside a very nice Taipei restaurant, and one of their signature dishes was “Bull penis and testicles”. I guess here we would leave the penis aside and call what was left “Rocky Mountain oysters.” I never considered my father a finicky eater, but I noticed that he always avoided eating anything from the animal kingdom that was too suggestive of its origins. So lobster and whole fish were definitely out, and he didn’t want to hear any details about the stuff that was left. Pretty strange considering that he actually grew up on a Depression-era farm.
Regarding ball parks, I’ve been to probably a dozen all over the country, but the last one I remember visiting was Camden Yards in Baltimore, probably 15 years ago. Very nice park, but I’m not sure I’d risk it any more. But as much as we talk about the rough neighborhoods, even back in the late 60s, my dad never wanted me going down to the old Comiskey Park to a White Sox game on Chicago’s south side because he said it was too unsafe. We lived down there when I was a toddler and he was going to college, and he had a few scary street experiences.
Good piece and good food pics. Hopefully I can be as traveled as you one day!
Lovely.
This post is making me hungry and the only cook is me, who has clocked off. Out of curiosity I googled Que Huong Melbourne (although I am far beyond the reach of Uber food drivers). As you said, there were lots of Que Huongs and even more Quoc Huongs in and around Melbourne. I think I will go to bed and hope to dream about a cafe called Que Huong opening up next door and inviting me in with its aromas, a sign saying: all you can eat for 50 cents. Thanks Linh for another slice of life somewhere else. We have had temperatures as high sometimes in the summer here, or even in the desert valley in Canada where I was raised, but always with very, very low humidity so hard to imagine what you are experiencing.
Hi Isha,
Quốc means country, so quốc hương is basically the same as quê hương.
Quê is geographically more specific. It means one's native village.
The Perfume River in Huế is Sông Hương, so hương is fragrance or aroma.
The taste of food is hương vị, meaning aroma and taste, so the fragrance of food is always coupled with its taste.
Linh
a wonderful article as always I loved the fanciful menu by the non English speakers
all that great food makes me hungry but i have settle for a toast and cheese