<story><title>People Met in Hotel Lobbies (2017)</title><url>https://jasonlefkowitz.net/2017/05/people-met-in-hotel-lobbies/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>sho</author><text>Very interesting. I confess I actually would be interested in some sort of modern equivalent, if that could even exist. Those few times I&amp;#x27;ve been lucky enough to stay in truly excellent hotels, or international business class lounges, I have sort of wondered what the other people there are thinking about and what they might have to say if I were to be so indiscrete to ask. I&amp;#x27;m not saying rich people know it all, or anything in particular - but just being present in a rarefied place like that does have &lt;i&gt;some&lt;/i&gt; story behind it and I&amp;#x27;m endlessly curious to know what that might be.&lt;p&gt;On another note, also interesting is the frankly crap quality of the scanned text, which one unfortunately presumes is the only copy remaining in existence. Is there any current or near future OCR&amp;#x2F;ML system which might be capable of transcribing the raw scans with any acceptable level of accuracy? It&amp;#x27;s a challenging read even for this human!</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>smacktoward</author><text>&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt; It&amp;#x27;s a challenging read even for this human!&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;You make a good point. I thought about transcribing the images when I originally wrote the post, but eventually convinced myself that was something I could get around to later, which of course meant that I never actually got around to it.&lt;p&gt;Your comment gave me the necessary kick in the butt to actually go back and do that, so thanks! Transcriptions are now provided for all the images. And as long as I was in there, I went ahead and added links to various contemporary terms that might not be clear to the modern reader, pointing to more information on what they mean.</text></comment>
<story><title>People Met in Hotel Lobbies (2017)</title><url>https://jasonlefkowitz.net/2017/05/people-met-in-hotel-lobbies/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>sho</author><text>Very interesting. I confess I actually would be interested in some sort of modern equivalent, if that could even exist. Those few times I&amp;#x27;ve been lucky enough to stay in truly excellent hotels, or international business class lounges, I have sort of wondered what the other people there are thinking about and what they might have to say if I were to be so indiscrete to ask. I&amp;#x27;m not saying rich people know it all, or anything in particular - but just being present in a rarefied place like that does have &lt;i&gt;some&lt;/i&gt; story behind it and I&amp;#x27;m endlessly curious to know what that might be.&lt;p&gt;On another note, also interesting is the frankly crap quality of the scanned text, which one unfortunately presumes is the only copy remaining in existence. Is there any current or near future OCR&amp;#x2F;ML system which might be capable of transcribing the raw scans with any acceptable level of accuracy? It&amp;#x27;s a challenging read even for this human!</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tgb</author><text>The modern equivalent seems to be &amp;quot;People of New York&amp;quot; which of course is not focused on just the well-to-do and influential but still has the spirit of thinking that there&amp;#x27;s a story if you just ask.&lt;p&gt;I would also assume that there are microfilm copies of the Washington Post though perhaps the scan is actually of good quality. The newspapers are intentionally cheaply printed and this was a hundred years ago. It might have just looked like that.</text></comment>