"Fourteen ways to be a better girlfriend."

*People are right. Pinterest is infested with the cheapest, most rubbishy AI slop that's around. Slop that's so crude it can't spell or count

*I got my handssss on one

*Drone-bombed in the 2020s

Slop

Ideas · Generative Art Timeline · Le Random

*A massive website struggling to deal with the history of generative art

*It's the old-school Y2K collapse, only much much more so

Can you please translate the Shelley poem "Ozymandias" into ASD-STE100 Simplified Technical English?

Copilot said:

Certainly. Since "Ozymandias" is in the public domain, it can be adapted freely.

ASD-STE100 Simplified Technical English aims for short sentences, one meaning per sentence, controlled vocabulary, and minimal figurative language. The result loses much of the poem's beauty, but preserves its information and message.

Ozymandias in ASD-STE100 Simplified Technical English

I met a traveller from an old country.
The traveller gave a report.
He said:
"In a desert, there are two large stone legs.
The legs stand upright.
The rest of the statue is not present.
Near the legs, there is a stone head on the ground.
The face has a frown.
The mouth shows contempt.
The expression shows authority.
The sculptor understood the character of the ruler.
The sculptor made these features in the stone.
The ruler is dead.
The sculptor and the ruler are dead.
The stone still shows these features.
On the base of the statue, there is an inscription.
The inscription says:
'I am Ozymandias.
I am king of kings.
Powerful rulers must look at my works.
They must feel despair because they cannot equal them.'
No works remain.
The statue is damaged.
The area around it is empty.
There is only flat desert.
The sand extends a long distance in all directions."

Notes on the conversion

Metaphors and poetic imagery are replaced with direct statements.
Emotional language is reduced to observable facts.

Ambiguity is removed where possible.

The central message remains: a powerful ruler tried to create a permanent monument, but time destroyed almost everything, and his power is gone.

In a sense, converting Ozymandias into ASD-STE100 turns it from a Romantic poem into something that reads like a field inspection report on the failure of long-term brand preservation.

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softrobotcritics:

*In the famous or infamous "Kama Sutra," the sage Vatsyayana describes the accomplishments or fields of study that Indian ladies of 300 AD should attempt to master in order to be civilized.

Question :—What else should a woman learn along with the Aphorisms of Love?
Answer :—According to Vatsyayana, she should earn 64 more arts. He says —

"At the same time that she studies the Aphorisms of Love, she should also study :

1. Singing.
2. Playing upon musical instruments.
3. Dancing.
4. The harmonized arrangement of dancing, singing and musical instruments.
5. Writing and drawing.
6. Tattooing.
7. Clothing and decorating an idol with rice and flowers.
8. The disposition and arrangement of beds or couches of flowers, or of flowers upon the earth.
9. The colouration of teeth, clothes, hair, nails and the body; that is, their painting, and the variousother ways of changing their colour.
10. The arrangement of coloured glasses on the floor.
11. The art of making beds and of spreading rugs and cushions for resting on.
12. Playing on musical glasses containing water.
13. The storing of water in cisterns and reservoirs.
14. Painting, arranging and decorating furniture.
15. The preparation of rosaries, necklaces, garlands, and crowns.
16. The preparation of turbans and chaplets, and making bouquets of flowers.
17. Science of representations. The acting of plays.
18. The preparation of ear-rings.
19. The art of preparing perfumes and scents.
20. The arrangements of jewellery and decorations, along with the whole art of matching costumes.
21. Magic or sorcery.
22. Sleight-of-hand.
23. The art of cookery.
24. The preparation of lemonade, sherbets and other sour drinks, and spirituous extracts with suitabie perfumes and colours.
25. The art of sewing.
26. The preparation of artificial flowers and birds.
27. The solution of puzzles, riddles, and conundrums.
28. A game of making verses, the first word or letter of which must be the same as the last word or letter in the verse made by the preceding player.
29. The art of mimicry or imitation.
30. Reading.
31. The study of words difficult to pronounce.
32. Fencing, and self-defence with the stick and the bow.
33. The art of reasoning.
34. The work of a carpenter.
35. Architecture.
36. The knowledge of the different sorts of money, jewels, and precious stones.
37. Chemistry and Mineralogy.
38. The colour of precious stones and pearls.
39. The understanding of mines and quarries.
40. Gardening, and the art of treating plant diseases.
41. The art of conducting fights between cocks, quails, and rams.
42. The art of teaching parrots and starlings to speak.
43. The art of applying perfumed ointments to the body, and of applying pomade to the hair as well as the whole art of hair-dressing.
44. Understanding different forms of hand-writing.
45. The art of talking in different styles.
46. The knowledge of the languages and dialects of the different provinces.
47. The art of decorating wagons with flowers.
48. The art of tracing mystic diagrams and preparing charms and enchantments. How to knot bracelets.
49. Various games which exercise the ingenuity of the players, as well as their command of language.
50. Verse-writing.
51. The knowledge of dictionaries and vocabularies.
52. The art of disguise.
53. The art of changing the appearance.of things, as to make cotton look like silk, and to make ordinary and cheap articles take on the appearance of fine and rare objects.
54. The various gambling games.
55. The art of getting other people's property by means of enchantments.
56. Various games of childhood.
57. Etiquette.
58. The science of war.
59. The art of gymnastics.
60. The art of understanding the character of a man by means if his facial features. (Physiognomy).
61. The art of scanning verses.
62. Arithmetic games.
63. Preparing artificial flowers.
64. Modelling figures and images in clay.

These, then, are the sixty-four branches of knowledge which every woman, or at least every woman of high rank, should study.

Doctor Faustus (play) - Wikipedia

FAUSTUS. How am I glutted with conceit of this!

Shall I make spirits fetch me what I please,

Resolve me of all ambiguities,

Perform what desperate enterprise I will?

I'll have them fly to India for gold,

Ransack the ocean for orient pearl,

And search all corners of the new-found world

For pleasant fruits and princely delicates;

I'll have them read me strange philosophy,

And tell the secrets of all foreign kings;

I'll have them wall all Germany with brass,

And make swift Rhine circle fair Wertenberg;

I'll have them fill the public schools with silk,

Wherewith the students shall be bravely clad;

I'll levy soldiers with the coin they bring,

And chase the Prince of Parma from our land,

And reign sole king of all the provinces;

Yea, stranger engines for the brunt of war,

Than was the fiery keel at Antwerp-bridge,

I'll make my servile spirits to invent.

******

How about some modern AI services that might assist in fulfilling the schemes of Faust?

Takeaway: Modern AI can't literally wall Germany with brass or make the Rhine circle Wittenberg, but it can approximate Faustus' ambitions through global data access, autonomous agents, simulation, logistics optimization, and intelligence analysis.

Below is a structured mapping of Faustus' desires → modern AI equivalents, with each agent framed as a contemporary counterpart to his "servile spirits."

Modern AI Services as Faustus' Spirits

Faustus wants:
instant global retrieval
omniscient knowledge
geopolitical secrets
engineering miracles
military invention
economic manipulation

Today, these map onto AI-driven systems, each specializing in a domain of power.

Retrieval & Exploration Spirits → Autonomous Data‑Gathering Agents

These fulfill "fly to India for gold" and "ransack the ocean for orient pearl."

Autonomous web‑scrapers — gather global market data, mineral reports, shipping manifests.

Satellite‑analysis AIs — scan oceans for resources, track vessels, identify mineral deposits.

Geospatial ML systems — map "all corners of the new-found world" with real‑time environmental sensing.

Supply‑chain optimizers — orchestrate global acquisition of rare goods.

These are the modern equivalent of spirits who can fetch anything from anywhere.

Scholarly Spirits → Large‑Scale Knowledge Models

These fulfill "read me strange philosophy" and "resolve me of all ambiguities."

Large language models — synthesize philosophy, science, and global literature.

Automated theorem provers — resolve ambiguities in logic and mathematics.

Multimodal research assistants — read papers, extract insights, summarize foreign knowledge.

AI translation engines — reveal "the secrets of all foreign kings" by dissolving language barriers.

These are the spirits of universal knowledge.

Intelligence Spirits → Geopolitical & Security AIs

These fulfill "tell the secrets of all foreign kings."

Open‑source intelligence (OSINT) AIs — analyze public data for political patterns.

Cybersecurity threat‑analysis systems — detect vulnerabilities and state‑level operations.

Predictive geopolitical models — simulate political outcomes and power shifts.

Social‑network analysis engines — map influence networks and information flows.

These are the modern equivalent of Faustus' spies in every court.

Engineering Spirits → Design & Simulation AIs

These fulfill "wall all Germany with brass" and "make swift Rhine circle fair Wertenberg."

Generative design systems — create architectural or infrastructural megaprojects.

Fluid‑dynamics simulators — model river redirection or hydrological engineering.

Materials‑science AIs — invent new alloys (Faustus' brass walls).

Urban‑planning optimizers — redesign cities and regions at scale.

These are the spirits of transformation of the physical world.

War‑Engine Spirits → Autonomous Defense & Strategy Systems

These fulfill "stranger engines for the brunt of war."

Defense‑simulation AIs — test hypothetical weapons and strategies.
Autonomous robotics planners — design new mechanical systems.

Cyber‑operations AIs — modern equivalents of infernal sabotage.

Logistics‑command AIs — "levy soldiers with the coin they bring" by optimizing resource deployment.

These are the spirits of military invention and command.

Civic & Cultural Spirits → Administrative Automation
These fulfill "fill the public schools with silk" and "bravely clad students."

Education‑resource optimizers — allocate materials across institutions.

Automated procurement systems — acquire goods at scale.

Policy‑simulation AIs — test reforms in education, economics, or governance.

These are the spirits of bureaucratic miracles.
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