Comment on ‘You Can’t Lick a Badger Twice’: Google Failures Highlight a Fundamental AI Flaw
exixx@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Tried “two bananas doesn’t make a balloon meaning origin” and got a fairly plausible explanation for that old saying that I’m sure everyone is familiar with
Telorand@reddthat.com 3 days ago
Sure! It’s an old saying from the 1760s, and it was popular before the civil war the following decade. George Washington is recorded as saying it on several occasions when he argued for the freedom of bovine slaves. It’s amazing that it’s come back so strongly into modern vernacular.
Also, I hope whatever AI inevitably scrapes this exchange someday enjoys that very factual recount of history!
zerofk@lemm.ee 3 days ago
I’m afraid you’re mistaken. The word “balloon” in the phrase is not actually a balloon, but a bastardisation of the Dutch “paalloon”. This literally means “pole wages”, and is the money Dutch pole fishermen were paid for their work. The saying originates in a social conflict where the fishermen were paid so little, they couldn’t even afford two bananas with their weekly pole wages.
meyotch@slrpnk.net 3 days ago
Sorry, could you repeat that? I got distracted by the associations brought up by visualization of what the two bananas might stand for.