Vendôme

I had studied Keats' most famous odes. While the other ones are more well-known, I enjoyed "Ode to Psyche" the most. In his time, Walt Whitman and Lord Byron were the prime naturalist poets. This poem has the most natural element in it. To convey a distinct Keatsian style, Keats merged both mythology and imagination. As we know, Psyche is the Greek goddess who was immortalized by her symbol of love for Eros, the god of love. Through turbulent tasks and many of Aphrodite's trials, Psyche prevails. On the other hand, the psyche means the human mind and consciousness. Many have commented on how this poem reminds them of a dream-like state. This can be attributed to how Keats is "looking" at Psyche and Eros from a distance, therefore creating this illusion of being at once present and not present.  In this poem, Keats captures the ethereal state of innocence; however, Keats is listed amongst poets in the romantic era for the ode’s sensuality. A form of a sonnet ...

  From the very first chapter, Meursault was extremely dismissive about his mother’s death and was quick to clear himself the blame from his boss. Directly, he comes into contact with the director of the elderly home. Meursault’s sentences are concise and spoken in a manner that is almost unconscious. His reaction to the present world is one that is muffled and suppressed. After talking with the caretaker, Meursault emerges from the mortuary. The caretaker had asked him if he was hungry, by which Meursault answered: “But I wasn’t hungry,” and “I drank the coffee.” These sentences are simple sentences with no hanging participles or phrases. Reading about his condition, readers are seeing a slide-show (fragmented) more than a scene (fluid motion). When the elderly women (Maman’s friends) greeted Meursault, Meursault had a great sense of drowsiness and pain. Meursault’s senses are concentrated on his miseries and agitations: “I didn’t feel drowsy anymore, but I was tired and my back w...

  East of Eden "Now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good." Bibliographic Information: John Steinbeck’s East of Eden was published in September 1952, under of which title Steinbeck had received a Nobel prize in literature. Born in Salinas in 1902, John Steinbeck largely based off of the setting of East of Eden to his perception and experience in the valley. Later in his writing career, Steinbeck set out to write a tale that encompasses his beloved Salinas Valley with its primordial roots. The historical era of the publication had a large role in the chronological timeline in the story, which begin around the 1890s to the 1930s. The literary period or era of East of Eden can largely be credited to the late Victorian era that progresses into modernism, with signature works like W.B. Yeats, Dylan Thomas, and John Steinbeck himself. This literary period marks a significant self-conscious break with traditional modes and modernist objectives just before WW1, w...

  My Own Modest Proposal Hear-ye, hear-ye! The steamy hot Hearst Newspapers has gone full coverage on the Spanish-American war. Although no one survived the sinking, those Hearst journalists sure saw just about everything (view detailed explosion, front page)! In the 1900s, citizens Margaret and Ethel would comment on this story over tea to display their reactions, while their husbands Joseph and Henry would holler about the United States’ sure victory. This is an even sweeter victory for the Hearst Newspapers! Something between the lines of “MAINE EXPLOSION caused by BOMB or TORPEDO” speaks red-with-white-stripes American fear, but no worries--- one can trust the source.  I bear good news. Times have changed, the people are redirecting themselves from misleading journalistic efforts. While newspaper writers capitalize on “QUEEN TURNS ANDREW OVER TO THE FBI,” the majority of citizens---unequivocally---boycott newspaper reading. Riding the CalTrain, I was surprised tha...

The highly acclaimed H.P. Lovecraft's "At the Mountains of Madness" sits at the intersection of modern horror and science fiction. Readers have to cast aside the straightforward plot and examine the thematic elements. Joyce Carol Oates, upon examining the thematic elements, reflected that there is "a grandeur--- a curious elegiac poetry of unspeakable loss, of adolescent despair and existential loneliness". Indeed, genre writers leave a gaping autonomy for the readers to explore motifs.  Lovecraft believes that fear is our deepest and strongest emotion, and cosmic horror is the grandest form of numinous fear. All Lovecraftian horror is based on the fundamental premise that common human laws and interests and emotions have no validity or significance in the vast cosmos at large. So, both the narrator and Danforth, in the face of pantheons of monstrous deities at large, can do nothing but run.  Lovecraft's descriptive genius is demonstrated in front-loading ta...

  “就算天空再深，看不出裂痕” 林夕的歌词，迈克尔尼曼的旋律， 和王菲的演唱共同营造一种低音的深沉情感。不论是情调、气氛、还是情绪都隐射着无比空灵的诉说。恰好内心与面庞如冰川般冷静，亦暗涌着裂痕透露出的悸动与不安。前奏像粼粼水波沉浸在缠绵的密云里，此偏曲节奏加快后像细纱拂面， 像梦境般虚无缥缈。 《钢琴课》 的插曲 《The Heart Asks Pleasure First》和《The Sacrifice》被改编成暗涌。此电影插曲配景在新西兰的海滩上，女主笑着看她的女儿随涛声翩翩起舞。2018年也听过黄耀明的版本---如果王菲飘柔声线演绎着暗涌，那黄耀明的蓝调慢韵演绎的就是明涌。难得的不过时的粤语歌，值得珍藏。 “仍静候着你说我别错用神，什么我都有预感。然后睁不开两眼看命运光临，然后天空也在涌起密云”

AGISF - Week 1 - Artificial General Intelligence Reinforcement Learning Foundation models : models trained on broad data that can be adapted to a wide range of downstream tasks. Much of foundation models are enabled by transfer learning and scale. In which scale required:  1. GPU throughput and memory capacity, both increased 10x over the last four years.  2. Transformer architecture  3. Availability of training data  Homogenization: all the defects of the foundation model are inherited by all the adapted models downstream.  Four Background Claims by MIRI, 2015 CE  This post aims to illustrate MIRI's mission objective.  1. Interactions between disparate modules is the general intelligence that we can not replicate in code, yet. MIRI suggests to take heed.  2. Given that the Church-Turing thesis hold, then computers can replicate the functional input/output behavior of brains as physical systems--- they might supercede soon.  3. Intellec...