Really trivial stuff that amuses you...

[DonM435]

The semi-professional 1950 version of Julius Caesar from is available on YouTube.com in nine parts.

I noted that they offered closed captioning, and turned it on. Very soon I noted that, hey, this is really, really bad. I mean, you can't get away with a bad transcription when so many of the audience know the verses so well.

E.g., according to the subtitles, Brutus says...
" ... this is my answer, not that I loved Caesar left, but that I love Rome for, a Jew rather Caesar were living and I all slaves and that Caesar was dead pull it all free men"

Antony (Charlton Heston, no less!) answers this with ...
" ... the evil that men do lives after them the good is often tarried with their bone ... "
" ... you all did see that on the lupica likewise presented him a kingly crown which he twice refused. With this ambition ..."

I figured out that these captions must have been generated by some sound-recognition software, some program that often misses the mark, much as if Shakespeare had dictated the play to a mostly deaf scribe.



If you think I exaggerate, check it out yourself
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjo6FG_4M7g

[Gillianren]

Yeah, auto-captioning is often terrible. I messaged my friend this week that you can tell that Max Miller of Tasting History does his own, though, because "[endorphins intensify]" is not normal captioning.

[Solfe]

This was terrible when it happened to me, but terribly funny now.

Last year about this time, I was taking a foreign language class for my teaching certification. Then the pandemic hit and I was taking a foreign language via Zoom. The terrible part was, I selected sign language as my foreign language because I already took every Spanish language class offered for my prior degree and I wanted (not needed) something new.

The first day we met online via Zoom was enlightening. My professor lead with: "I know sign language because I am deaf. Using Zoom, I can't lip read because the images are too small and too jagged. I can't teach sign while leaning into the monitor to read text. So my advice for surviving this class is learn sign language fast."

She might as well have said, "Welcome to the Thunderdome, baby!"

Thinking back on this situation makes me belly laugh because it was so crazy and I managed to pass with a B+.

[Trebuchet]

Truncated thread titles in automated posts from UT. "There's evidence that Mars once had an" is today's example. Also bugs me a bit.

[Trebuchet]

This was terrible when it happened to me, but terribly funny now.

Last year about this time, I was taking a foreign language class for my teaching certification. Then the pandemic hit and I was taking a foreign language via Zoom. The terrible part was, I selected sign language as my foreign language because I already took every Spanish language class offered for my prior degree and I wanted (not needed) something new.

The first day we met online via Zoom was enlightening. My professor lead with: "I know sign language because I am deaf. Using Zoom, I can't lip read because the images are too small and too jagged. I can't teach sign while leaning into the monitor to read text. So my advice for surviving this class is learn sign language fast."

She might as well have said, "Welcome to the Thunderdome, baby!"

Thinking back on this situation makes me belly laugh because it was so crazy and I managed to pass with a B+.

Not so amusing is the recent video of a professor berating a deaf student for looking at her translator.

[Solfe]

Not so amusing is the recent video of a professor berating a deaf student for looking at her translator.

I saw that. That is ugly. One way to loose a job, I guess.

I find it rather amusing that I have had several professors who are what I call Double D's. They have Ph.D's in a field and second in education. The second one isn't required, but the skills shine through when they have it. They would never go after a student like that.

Edit - One time I had a professor sass me for being the oldest person in a room full of students and advisors. He specifically said "I am targeting you because as your advisor, I know you're the oldest person in the room. I have a Ph.D and you don't because you barely graduated high school, I've been doing this for 20 years. I doubt you could find a better advisor.' Or something to that effect.

I smiled and asked if his mom could be my advisor, because clearly, she knows how to make doctors. He wanted to get administration involved which I strongly encouraged.

I probably shouldn't have said that for a variety of reasons, but it amused me to no end. The guy didn't see the writing on the wall when they called in an arbitrator to settle the matter. It is never a good sign when the school's admin team thinks the outside arbitrator is best for handling a situation. He got grilled for about four hours on two different days. They asked me exactly two questions in those meetings: if he mentioned my age and if I found the arbitrator's decision acceptable. I answered "yes" to both. The next advisor I had was worse as an advisor but a much better human being. He turned me over to one of the many Double Doctors in the department and things went a lot better from there.

[Jens]

Not so amusing is the recent video of a professor berating a deaf student for looking at her translator.

Sorry, this is a bit of a nitpick from a translator, but if the person was changing speech to sign language, I think it would usually be an “interpreter”.

[grant hutchison]

Sorry, this is a bit of a nitpick from a translator, but if the person was changing speech to sign language, I think it would usually be an “interpreter”.

Ah-ha. I was imagining that the student was looking at some sort of speech-to-text device. But now that you've posted this, a quick search tells me an interpreter was involved. One of the things that seems to have set this professor off on an ill-advised rant was that the student seemed (according to the professor) to be distracted and "laughing and smiling and giggling" with another person during some kind of "virtual class".
I don't know what was going on, or who was doing what, and it sound like an investigation is kicking off. Maybe it was a professional interpreter and the professor was ignorant of the student's requirements and/or being crass and unreasonable and/or misinterpreting the student-interpreter interaction. But I have personal experience of working through a member of a patient's family who offered to act as interpreter, who was clearly joking about something with the patient while I was trying to have a serious conversation. It's really, really annoying (and in a medical setting, very worrying), and one of the reasons my hospital used professional services in all but the most urgent or trivial circumstances. (My own situation was a conversation that started off trivial and then evolved, as these things sometimes do.)

As I say, I have no idea what was actually happening in this case--but the "laughing and smiling and giggling" quote gave me a flashback to my own problem, years ago. There's a reason why "interpreter" is a job with a code of conduct, and not just something a random bilingual person can do.

Grant Hutchison

[Gillianren]

Even if that's the case, there's a professional way to handle things, and it sounds as though the professor did not do that.

[grant hutchison]

Even if that's the case, there's a professional way to handle things, and it sounds as though the professor did not do that.

Yes, that's what I was attempting to convey by the phrase "ill-advised rant". These things should never be addressed in public, or when emotions are running high. A calm, private discussion with student and interpreter, concerning the professor's worry about distraction and lack of application would have been the way forward. I'd probably have yanked someone from Student Services into the discussion, too.

Grant Hutchison

[Trebuchet]

I just opened an email from my cable provider. It said we may experience some service interruptions due to "sun outages".
And said it more than once.
We seem to be having one of those just now as it's all dark outside. But the cable is working.

[Trebuchet]

I just opened an email from my cable provider. It said we may experience some service interruptions due to "sun outages".
And said it more than once.
We seem to be having one of those just now as it's all dark outside. But the cable is working.

Ok, I Google. Apparently thats actually a thing when the sun is in line with a geosynchronous satellite!

[Jens]

I just opened an email from my cable provider. It said we may experience some service interruptions due to "sun outages".
And said it more than once.
We seem to be having one of those just now as it's all dark outside. But the cable is working.

Yeah, there are regular sun outages in Japan too. They seem to happen once a day, usually from about six in the evening.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Nicolas]

I have sympathy for people who like to gently ruffle the feathers of a certain target audience. Like the guy whose Porsche Cayenne wears the vanity plate "911 SUV". Or yesterday, a grafitti tagname " you'r ". Lovely. :-)

[Trebuchet]

As mentioned in the reading thread, I've been working my way through Ann Cleeves' mystery novels. I finished the Vera Stanhope ones and and now am in the Shetland series and have realized an important difference between the peoples of Northumberland and Shetland. The former have Agas, and the latter have Rayburns.

[pzkpfw]

Ask not how the pot boils?

[ozduck]

As mentioned in the reading thread, I've been working my way through Ann Cleeves' mystery novels. I finished the Vera Stanhope ones and and now am in the Shetland series and have realized an important difference between the peoples of Northumberland and Shetland. The former have Agas, and the latter have Rayburns.

Like this one?

(pzkpfw may have seen this vehicle before. I photographed it in Oamaru (South Island New Zealand) during their Victorian Heritage Celebrations in 2014.)

[Torsten]

Also spotted in Oamaru, almost a year ago to the day...

[ozduck]

Also spotted in Oamaru, almost a year ago to the day...

Oamaru was a great stop. We just lucked out in passing through it during the festival. The Steampunk HQ was certainly different and also a lot of fun.

[pzkpfw]

Like this one?

(pzkpfw may have seen this vehicle before. I photographed it in Oamaru (South Island New Zealand) during their Victorian Heritage Celebrations in 2014.)

When I first saw this post I was going to reply that people like you and Torsten who have visited as tourists, will have seen more of NZ than me (I've hardly seen much of the South Island).

I come here after dinner to make the comment - and Torsten has proven my point before I made it :-)

[ozduck]

When I first saw this post I was going to reply that people like you and Torsten who have visited as tourists, will have seen more of NZ than me (I've hardly seen much of the South Island).

I come here after dinner to make the comment - and Torsten has proven my point before I made it :-)

That seems to be pretty much a common theme for most people. I know our German friends have seen more of outback Australia than I have.

[Gillianren]

One of my hopes of the After Time is to take the kids places around Western Washington and let them get to know their state the way we got to know Los Angeles County when I was a kid there--though there are plenty of touristy things we never did there, come to that!

[Torsten]

Oamaru was a great stop. We just lucked out in passing through it during the festival. The Steampunk HQ was certainly different and also a lot of fun.

I also arrived, unexpectedly, as runners from all over the globe were finishing the 2020 "Alps 2 Ocean Ultra", a 323 km staged run completed over a 7 day period.

I come here after dinner to make the comment - and Torsten has proven my point before I made it :-)

One of my hopes of the After Time is to take the kids places around Western Washington and let them get to know their state the way we got to know Los Angeles County when I was a kid there--though there are plenty of touristy things we never did there, come to that!

When I was a kid, our family went on a camping holiday to different parts of the province almost every summer. I have fond memories of those trips.

[Trebuchet]

When I drove onto the scale at the transfer station I noticed that the readout for the vehicle weight was less than usual. Then I realized that 20-odd pounds of the difference was me!

[Solfe]

Now that WandaVision is over, I want to talk about it. But because I some how missed 8 weeks spoilers during my watching of it, I don't want to spoil it for anyone by gabbing about it.

"Have you see all the shows? No? Forgot it. Just enjoy the shows and we'll talk later."

[Gillianren]

Definitely not a problem I have in my circle of friends! I managed to avoid spoilers as well, despite watching episodes nearly twenty-four hours after they dropped every week.

[grant hutchison]

My difficulty is with convincing friends that I don't care a whit about spoilers--in fact, I'm enthusiastic to hear what exactly they liked about a film, TV programme or book, so that I can judge if I want to spend time on it myself. (Also, I just enjoying listening to my friends talking in a relaxed manner about stuff they're enthusiastic about.)
But it's surprisingly difficult to get someone to stop hedging and just spit out the details of the amazing mid-season twist or end-of-season reveal that they enjoyed so much. I practically have to sign a liability waiver in blood.

Grant Hutchison

[Delvo]

That reminds me of the general rule I've discovered that the scenes I love the most are usually the ones that would take the most explaining to try to tell somebody else why if they weren't already watching, because that one mind-blowing scene depends so much on setup, possibly years of it. So I end up not telling anybody about it, not to protect them from spoilers, but because it would just take too long and still not have the impact on them that it would on a viewer.

[grant hutchison]

That reminds me of the general rule I've discovered that the scenes I love the most are usually the ones that would take the most explaining to try to tell somebody else why if they weren't already watching, because that one mind-blowing scene depends so much on setup, possibly years of it. So I end up not telling anybody about it, not to protect them from spoilers, but because it would just take too long and still not have the impact on them that it would on a viewer.

Well, that's the reason I don't get the whole "spoiler" thing--for me, the effectiveness of the narrative doesn't come from some particular plot twist, but how the plot twist is delivered. The acting, the script, the cinematography, the story arc.
So I want to listen to a friend who is at liberty to tell me exactly why the Big Reveal was done so effectively, for them. Once they properly appreciate that I don't care about plot "spoilers" they're free to do that, and may well make me aware of things that will enhance my subsequent enjoyment, if their recommendation seems like one that will suit my own tastes. They're never going to be able to transfer the exact emotional experience from their head to mine (that really would be a spoiler, wouldn't it?), but they can talk to me about how the scene affected them, and why it worked for them in the way it did. And, as I say, I just enjoy listening to my friends telling me about stuff that moves or excites or intrigues them.

Grant Hutchison

[Jens]

I kind of agree with Grant, but with caveats. In a lot of cases it doesn't matter at all. I really enjoyed both Amadeus and Gandhi, even though I pretty much knew how they were going to end... But there are movies, such as Sixth Sense and Angel Heart, to name two, where not knowing the plot twist really makes it more fun. Though it's also cool to go back and watch the film a second time knowing what you might have guessed. But certainly in cases like Harry Potter, you can still know= "kids do magic spells, Gryfindor wins the game, kids talk about kissing, Harry beats the bad guy" and it's still fun.