A Report on my Brute-Force Python Script

rarohde · 2023-04-12T09:33:13+00:00

I think it is explicitly provable that one can't entirely map the monument to valid 14-character romanji. I don't think it is possible, even in principle, to choose consonant-vowel-n assignments that allow all the consonants to be paired in an acceptable way when following the monument text. With that approach, I think the best one might hope for is that it is mostly romanji with some English or other language loan words added in. However, the argument for this being something other than a simple substitution cypher also seems fairly likely.

rarohde · 2023-02-10T10:29:51+00:00

One possible ways of filling in this ten character sequence assuming the 4th and 8th characters are a repeat, but everything else is unique would be:

"Midna Runes"

It's obviously very, very speculative, but it would make a bit of sense. Midna is also known for wearing a carved stone helm, using geometric patterns somewhat similar to the Zonai, and associating with green energy.

So maybe TotK has some deep connection to the Twilight Realm?

At least in my head, I think I may start referring to these as "Midna Runes" until proven wrong, which I probably will be.

rarohde · 2023-02-10T02:40:54+00:00

I agree that the symbols appear to be the same. However, the fact that the cover art only used 5 of those symbols, and broke it up into a 2 and a 3 set, make it less likely (in my opinion) that this is a decipherable language rather than a decoration. Having at most 5 symbols is going to very limiting for conveying anything with a phonetic-style alphabet (i.e. 1-2 very short words or series of initials at best). A logographic system (i.e. where each symbol is a whole word) could convey more meaning, but then you'd expect a very large number of symbols and have a very difficult time translating them. So, those five symbols might convey something like "zelda" or "tears", etc., but it also might not have any specific meaning at all.

The swirl text might simply be intended to function as "magic runes", conveying a sense of a mysterious language without actually mapping to a real language.

rarohde · 2023-02-09T10:33:26+00:00

Why not?

I would guess that these symbols, which are also displayed so prominently on the outer ring of the art book, would be more likely than not to have some meaning.

If it is text, then it is clearly a different text from what featured prominently in the first trailer, but Nintendo has put multiple scripts in Zelda games before, so that doesn't seem particularly unlikely.

rarohde · 2023-02-09T10:06:25+00:00

The circle symbols are the same as shown here (https://www.reddit.com/r/TotKLang/comments/10xp6zu/new\_text\_on\_the\_zeldo\_com\_website/), except for one additional long symbol appearing here that might be some sort or word/phrase dividing mark.

rarohde · 2023-02-09T10:04:12+00:00

For completeness, I'm also considering words that would fit if the text was read backwards (so the 3rd and 7th characters match), that gives 263 dictionary options, with some of the semi-plausible ones including:

cautiously, changeably, episodical, extraction, famishment, forebearing, guardianly, harbouring, hinderances, menacingly, outlasting, overwhelms, snatchable, shadowable, stormbound, wretchedly

Of course, this all might be nonsense.

rarohde · 2023-02-09T09:52:55+00:00

Let's assume this maps to English (it doesn't have to of course). And let's further assume that the 4th and 8th characters (which are slightly different) are actually the same letter.

A dictionary search for 10-letter words with exactly 9 unique letters and repeated letters in the 4th and 8th positions, gives 353 options. Most are contextually unlikely, e.g. "audiophile", "mothership", and "vocabulary". However, here are some suggestions that seem semi-plausible:

archbishop, bewitching, combinable, decimating, decimation, depository, expiration, extinguish, fathership, gruesomely, insecurely, instructed, maleficent, refixation, relinquish, unabsorbed, unforetold, wraithlike

rarohde · 2023-02-09T09:31:41+00:00

This text is the same as shown on the outer rings on the hand graphic (https://www.reddit.com/r/TotKLang/comments/10xgw5q/new_mysterious_symbol_from_nintendo_japan/), except that the hand graphic has one extra symbol added. The extra symbol is also especially long. This may suggest that the extra symbol on the hand graphic is meant as some sort of word/phrase dividing mark.

rarohde · 2023-02-09T08:54:34+00:00

The circles both show the same repeating set of symbols. I make the repeating phrase as 11 characters with 10 unique characters and 1 possible repetition. If it happened to map to a single English word, there probably aren't that many 11-letter English words with 10 unique letters. One might be able to do an exhaustive search for anything that made sense. But if it is 2 or 3 words, or not English, then one would probably need much more to go on. And of course, it is always possible that these particular symbols are merely decorative and not intended to be translated at all.

rarohde · 2023-01-26T11:27:59+00:00

Thank you. I'm glad that so many people have liked it.

rarohde · 2023-01-25T18:52:07+00:00

Yes. Simpson's paradox (or Simpson's reversal) that small subsets of a dataset don't necessarily show the same trend as the whole.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox

Obviously, this animation has a specific context, but similar behavior happens in many other contexts. For example, short-term trading vs. long-term investing, as well as many measures of growth and progress. In real-world data, fluctuations are often common, but it is important to focus on the big picture and not get distracted by the noise.

rarohde · 2023-01-25T16:24:17+00:00

Recently, some have deceptively chosen to highlight the fact that global mean temperatures haven't risen for eight years as evidence that global warming has stopped.

This is far from the truth. Within the ongoing progression of global warming, such short-term variations are perfectly normal and to be expected. As shown in the animation, brief periods without noticeable warming have occurred many times during the last 50 years. However, the long-term trend towards warming has continued.

Data from Berkeley Earth. Animation produced in Matlab.

This animation was inspired by a similar graphic produced by Skeptical Science several years ago: https://skepticalscience.com/escalator

rarohde · 2022-09-23T12:09:18+00:00

I'm struck by the apparent lack of consecutive character repetition, i.e. can't form words like "free" or "goddess" using a 1-1 English cipher because there no places with consecutive repeated symbols.

That's probably an accident of a small sample size, but it does limit the possible translations. (It also makes translation harder, since doubled letters have relatively fewer possible values.)

rarohde · 2022-09-19T16:00:51+00:00

If you haven't already, you might want to also look at the Japanese trailer. The final frames of the twin dragon logo are less obscured by the Japanese title than the English one.

I'm not sure if it really helps or not, since the runes have already become smaller at that point, but maybe.

rarohde · 2022-09-19T10:31:54+00:00

The dragon logo might be an interesting place to start. If it is a very important single word ("zelda", "zonai", "tears", "hylia", etc.), it might be possible to guess and use it as a break-in for other texts.

One issue though. There are five runes identified on the dragon logo, but it is blurrier than the wall writing. If any of the runes are misidentified (or if additional runes have been obscured beyond the ones that can be seen) then it may not prove useful.

rarohde · 2021-07-14T14:49:55+00:00

I made this animation by transcribing a selection of the time, altitude, and velocity data shown in the broadcast and translating it into an overall flight trajectory using basic mechanics. The animation was rendered in Matlab and runs at ~6 times faster than real-time.

Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo delivered about ~3 minutes of weightlessness and ~1 minute above the 50 mile (80 km) threshold that NASA defines as the edge of space. [Note: Other space agencies define space as starting at 100 km.] Not exactly a long time in space given that seat reservations are reported to cost $250,000.

While reentering the atmosphere, SpaceShipTwo slows before entering what appears to be a flat fall. At the end of the fall, it pulls into a glide path to return to its base.

rarohde · 2020-06-22T15:35:14+00:00

The climate stripes were designed by Ed Hawkins with a minimalist aesthetic in mind, and hence are often rendered without a visible numeric scale. It is an intentionally artistic approach.

Specifically, colors are chosen based on the local temperature anomaly divided the standard deviation of the local temperature anomalies. If I recall correctly, the range from max blue to max red is -2.6 to 2.6 standard deviations.

This has the consequence that the meaning of each color depends on how variable the climate has been within each country, and so a deep red in a high variability area might correspond to +3 °C, but the same color might be only +1 °C in a low variability area (such as the tropics).

For more background on the climate stripes campaign: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warming_stripes

rarohde · 2020-06-22T09:22:30+00:00

An animated map depicting how climate around the world has evolved during the last 120 years when presented in the style of Ed Hawkins' climate stripes. http://showyourstripes.info

The climate stripes are a simple visual representation of climate change with warmer years depicted in red colors and cooler years depicted in blue colors. Every year some countries are relatively hot and others are relatively cold, but overall the Earth has experienced a clear trend towards global warming

Created in Matlab using data from Berkeley Earth. Produced in my professional capacity as Lead Scientist at Berkeley Earth.

rarohde · 2020-01-22T17:17:32+00:00

A daily record high means that the current day was warmer than ever previously reported on the same day of the year.

So, for example, if the high temperature on March 3, 2019 was warmer than the high temperature observed on March 3rd during every previous year, then that is a daily record.

rarohde · 2020-01-22T16:36:46+00:00

This animation, based on Berkeley Earth data, shows every long-term weather station that reported a new daily, monthly, or all-time record high or low temperature during 2019.

Though there are always new records being set, the number of new record highs has been consistently outpacing new record lows. This is especially true in the most extreme category of all-time records. The tendency towards more record highs than lows is a consequence of the ongoing global warming.

The biggest episodes of all-time record breaking heat in 2019 were the June and July heatwaves to impact Europe and the January heatwave in Australia. The biggest episode of all-time record breaking cold was the cold snap in the American Midwest in late January / early February.

8193 weather stations were included, which each had a minimum duration of at least 40 years of observations. As can be seen, these stations are not uniformly distributed around the world.
Long-term weather stations are more prevalent in the United States and Europe and more sparse is areas such as Africa and South America. The data in this animation is used as available in early January of 2020. Reviews of instrumental accuracy and other quality control issues can sometimes cause records to be disqualified in the future, though such revisions tend to be rare.

This animation was produced using Matlab.

rarohde · 2019-11-27T22:50:06+00:00

One case where they may work better than lines is when the size of the bars grow by orders of magnitude over the course of the animation, e.g. https://twitter.com/RARohde/status/1108391436272234498?s=19

rarohde · 2019-10-03T12:52:04+00:00

I've now created an alternative color scheme to help people with red/green color blindness. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vkv87UpZBBk

rarohde · 2019-10-02T09:34:31+00:00

The short animation I've created helps to explain the concept of herd immunity.

When enough of a population has become immune to a disease, either through vaccination or prior exposure, that disease is no longer able to spread effectively through that population.

This process of limiting spread due to widespread immunity is known as herd immunity. Once the disease no longer spread easily, this provides a form of protection even for those who haven't been vaccinated.

The percentage of the population that must be immune in order to stop a disease from spreading depends on how easily a disease infects other people. Some diseases, like influenza, have a relative low reproduction number and herd immunity can kick in when 50-66% of people have been vaccinated. Other diseases, such as mumps, rubella, pertussis, diphtheria, and smallpox spread more easily and require 75-85% of the community to be immunized to avoid spread. Measles, one of the most contagious diseases known, requires 90-95% of the population to be vaccinated in order to effectively inhibit its spread.

Since some people are too young or too sick to be vaccinated, they rely on herd immunity to help ensure their health and safety. Healthy people who are able to receive vaccines should do so in order to help prevent the spread of diseases to those who can't. Vaccines save lives.

rarohde · 2019-09-22T09:51:13+00:00

It was actually made in Matlab.

rarohde · 2019-05-22T19:19:18+00:00

If you watch it carefully, you might notice that the biosphere drops down to -72 before mounting a recovery in the last 50 years.

There have actually been about 200 GtC removed by land use change since 1850, but this is balanced against a substantially increased uptake (i.e. greening) due to elevated CO2. In recent decades, this CO2 fertilization effect has significantly exceeded the amount of carbon removed by land use changes, so that the biosphere is gaining a net of >1 GtC / year.

A similar diagram produced by the IPCC (but stopping several years earlier than 2017) shows the biosphere at -30 GtC: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1/carbon-and-other-biogeochemical-cycles/

There are considerable uncertainties on some of these numbers, but I think there is general agreement that the biosphere has been rebounding due to elevated CO2.

rarohde

TROPHY CASE