Highlights of the week of November 13-19
This week, the Cambridge Dictionary's word of the year was revealed, one of the rarest menus was sold, and some details of the Christmas celebrations were revealed.
Cambridge Word of the Year
It was the verb "to hallucinate". In 2023, a new meaning was added to the already familiar, if not the most commonly used, word. Now the verb can be applied to artificial intelligence. It means roughly the same as in humans but with adjustments for the specifics of AI.
The hallucination of generative AI when creating a text or image can manifest itself in distortions of fact or logic, as well as errors that occur due to processing a large amount of similar information. A rather famous precedent occurred when an AI recommended eating glass because it was healthy.
Last year's words of the year were "permacrisis," "goblin mod," and "homer.
The largest Santa in the world
The symbol of Christmas will appear on the slopes of the Rochers-de-Naye in Switzerland. The peculiarity of this year is that the saint and children's favorite will appear not as a sculpture, but as a projection.
The projection is planned not only as a challenge for the Book of Records but also as a symbol of a significant date. This year marks the 20th anniversary of Santa's house on the very mountain where Montreux, one of the largest Christmas markets in Switzerland, is held.
It is expected that it will be possible to see the projection in the evenings from November 27 to December 1, but the possibility of the show will depend heavily on the weather.
One of the rarest menus on the planet
The restaurant menu was for the Titanic and gave a look at some of the dishes that were served aboard the sunken liner. The list mentions oysters, beef tenderloin, and a few desserts. It is worth noting that this menu is for one day only, April 11, 1912. The item was auctioned off for 95,000 euros.
Among the items of memory related to the "Titanic", the auction participants also remembered the plaid scarf that covered one of the surviving passengers in the lifeboat. It is worth noting that this lot was even more expensive than the menu because it was recognized as one of the rarest three-dimensional objects. Its final price was 97,000 pounds or about 110,000 euros.
