21–30 of 55 posts
This image shows a close-up of the second story window (Courtesy the New York Times) A 'close up' that is smaller and lower resolution than the main photo on the article, which is courtesy of the NY public library. NY Times isn't mentioned in the text at all. Is this entire article an LLM hallucination?
This image shows a close-up of the second story window (Courtesy the New York Times) A 'close up' that is smaller and lower resolution than the main photo on the article, which is courtesy of the NY public library. NY Times isn't mentioned in the text at all. Is this entire article an LLM hallucination?
An article at the National Archives written in 2010? That would be remarkable.
The past is so much closer than you think. We are only three human lifetimes away from the American Revolution. The last living children of American slaves were around into the 2010s. Back to Teddy, the last living person who could have met him was still around in the 2000s as well, meaning in your lifetime you could have talked to someone who knew someone who saw Abe Lincoln alive.
Emma Morano died April 15, 2017, the NIPS submission deadline for "Attention Is All You Need" was May 19, and a Wired article indicates they were testing models for quite a few weeks before then.
The timeline doesn't match up here. We're told that historian Stefan Lorant was doing his research in the 1950s. Then we're told that he checked with Teddy Roosevelt's wife and got her confirmation that one of the children in the window was Teddy Roosevelt. Roosevelt was married twice, and his first wife, Alice Hathaway Lee, died in 1884, so it's not her. But his second wife, Edith Carow, died in 1948, at age 87. So…
The timeline doesn't match up here. We're told that historian Stefan Lorant was doing his research in the 1950s. Then we're told that he checked with Teddy Roosevelt's wife and got her confirmation that one of the children in the window was Teddy Roosevelt. Roosevelt was married twice, and his first wife, Alice Hathaway Lee, died in 1884, so it's not her. But his second wife, Edith Carow, died in 1948, at age 87. So…
> But she would have been just three years old at the time of Lincoln's funeral, and while her family and the Roosevelt's family socialized together, even her quoted reminiscence is less than definitive about whether that's actually TR. While she might not have direct memory of the event, it would not be unheard of for older relatives to explain the picture to her when she was older. Just because she doesn't remember…
Even if she didn't remember whether Teddy was standing at that window at that time, she probably knew that she at Teddy and his brother were at the mansion for the event.
So we have the Roosevelt mansion, knowledge that not many boys would have been allowed to be in that window, and confirmation that Teddy Roosevelt was there watching at that time.
The timeline doesn't match up here. We're told that historian Stefan Lorant was doing his research in the 1950s. Then we're told that he checked with Teddy Roosevelt's wife and got her confirmation that one of the children in the window was Teddy Roosevelt. Roosevelt was married twice, and his first wife, Alice Hathaway Lee, died in 1884, so it's not her. But his second wife, Edith Carow, died in 1948, at age 87. So…
The blog article links Stefan Lorant's own recollection of the event, but the link is broken (fair enough, the blog entry is from 2010). Fortunately though, the link is archived on the Wayback Machine [0], where we can see it is an article from American Heritage, June 1955. In the linked article Lorent does not specify when exactly he interviewed Edith Carrow Roosevelt, but I think it is fair to assume that the refer…
It came with a card full of abe lincoln vs john f kennedy coincidences.
(I wonder if I still have it somewhere?)
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=lincoln+kennedy+penny+card&iar=ima...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln%E2%80%93Kennedy_coinci...
The past is so much closer than you think. We are only three human lifetimes away from the American Revolution. The last living children of American slaves were around into the 2010s. Back to Teddy, the last living person who could have met him was still around in the 2000s as well, meaning in your lifetime you could have talked to someone who knew someone who saw Abe Lincoln alive.
Indeed this is one of the things I most enjoyed when I first visited DC, the realization of just how recent these historical events really were. Standing on a battlefield in Gettysburg and thinking "This all happened in the 1860s, barely more than 100 years before I was born. I have relatives who lived in this area at that time, and only a few generations back." When I talk to young people today, and realize how litt…
The question will be at some point, will they be able to tell it apart from AI generated fake ones? (and will they care?)
Already now youtube recommends me some obvious AI generated garbage as WW2 documentations. And that was just garbage generated for attention (ad money). Once big actors with money want to rewrite history and flood the web with fake images to spread certain narratives, then new challenges will arise.
I hope enough people still care about facts and guard them.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Indeed this is one of the things I most enjoyed when I first visited DC, the realization of just how recent these historical events really were. Standing on a battlefield in Gettysburg and thinking "This all happened in the 1860s, barely more than 100 years before I was born. I have relatives who lived in this area at that time, and only a few generations back." When I talk to young people today, and realize how litt…
"Our descendants are going to enjoy an enormous wealth of imagery and videos for events that will to them otherwise be just something from a history book. " The question will be at some point, will they be able to tell it apart from AI generated fake ones? (and will they care?) Already now youtube recommends me some obvious AI generated garbage as WW2 documentations. And that was just garbage generated for attention…
Lord knows what falsehoods of today will become the official record of tomorrow never mind what lies of the past we just repeat because they're what got written down.
The past is so much closer than you think. We are only three human lifetimes away from the American Revolution. The last living children of American slaves were around into the 2010s. Back to Teddy, the last living person who could have met him was still around in the 2000s as well, meaning in your lifetime you could have talked to someone who knew someone who saw Abe Lincoln alive.
I think his post that really got me was the 2021 headline, The Last Documented Widow of a Civil War Veteran Has Died: https://kottke.org/21/01/the-last-documented-widow-of-a-civi...