I was back at the night school after taking two weeks off. This time of year is tough, it's cold and the wind from the West must bring a lot of volcanic ash from SakuraJima, sand from a desert in Asia, and pollution from corporate workshops in South China. But it was a little warmer last night and more people came. Only one girl played with G-Compris for a while, good to see the ancient Macbook still works. There were some good conversations too, with the poetry group, with the guitar teacher..
One of the nice ladies in the 2-person poetry group is around 80 years old. Her daughter had just visited from Australia. David Noble commented somewhere that many Luddites were sent to Australia and somebody there thought it helped their labor movement. Byron's poem made the tangent almost appropriate we verified the Japanese ラッダイト and that the poem really was Byron's. Conversation naturally drifted to LLMs, Tinmit Gebru and Emily Bender..
> As the liberty lads o'er the sea
Bought their freedom, and cheaply, with blood,
So we, boys, we
Shall die fighting or live free,
And down with all kings but King Ludd!
> ...
Song for the Luddites (1816).
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Lord_Byron
#ByronPoem #SongForTheLuddites #KingLudd
Lord Byron - Wikiquote