End-to-end dialog systems, in which all components are learnt simultaneously,
have recently obtained encouraging successes. However these were mostly on
conversations related to chit-chat with no clear objective and for which
evaluation is difficult. This paper proposes a set of tasks to test the
capabilities of such systems on goal-oriented dialogs, where goal completion
ensures a well-defined measure of performance. Built in the context of
restaurant reservation, our tasks require to manipulate sentences and symbols,
in order to properly conduct conversations, issue API calls and use the outputs
of such calls. We show that an end-to-end dialog system based on Memory
Networks can reach promising, yet imperfect, performance and learn to perform
non-trivial operations. We confirm those results by comparing our system to a
hand-crafted slot-filling baseline on data from the second Dialog State
Tracking Challenge (Henderson et al., 2014a).

Source: http://bppro.link/?c=QWM

Many of Clinton’s most vocal critics cite her glad-handing with billionaires, yet turn a blind eye to her husband doing precisely the sameAs Hillary Clinton’s book tour chugs on around the US, two opinion pieces keep popping up. The first, which always appears under the headline “Hillary Clinton still doesn’t get it”, asks when this woman is going to shut up and why she is still blaming others for the election. The other, with equal frequency, demands: “Why do people keep telling Hillary Clinton to shut up?”, god forbid a woman should have an opinion. Related: The New York Times had an anti-Hillary Clinton agenda? That’s untrue | Jill Abramson Continue reading…

Source: http://bppro.link/?c=Y1P

America has become the object of its own collective worship, with Trump the Herod of its civic religion. But loyalty to God must always beat loyalty to the stateThe civil religion of the United States of America has long been the United States of America, with a thin veneer of Protestant Christianity to camouflage its nauseating liturgies of self-love. Its object of veneration is the flag. Its saints are war veterans. America is the promised land and to be an American is to be uniquely blessed by God. Little wonder that the former quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers, Colin Kaepernick, has proved so threatening to the self-image of this bastardised inversion of the Christian faith.Two years ago, and in support of the Black Lives Matter movement, Kaepernick refused to stand for that unsingable dirge, the Star Spangled Banner. How could he participate in country worship when that same country was so corrupted by injustice and violence against people of colour? But to a nation that has itself become the object of its own collective worship, disrespecting the American hymn is the worst of all heresies. Thus Donald Trump, the Herod of American civic religion, recently called on football club owners to sack any “son of a bitch” that refused to stand for the national anthem. Within days, Kaepernick had been joined by hundreds of other NFL players who also refused to stand and instead, as the phrase now goes, “took the knee”. Soon after, a photograph of Martin Luther King taking the knee went viral, as if his participation in this newly fashionable practice was a great surprise. No surprise, people – it’s called prayer. And it’s been a form of protest for centuries. Continue reading…

Source: http://bppro.link/?c=Y1N

President says NFL owners are ‘afraid of their players’ in interviewTrump said Wednesday that NFL’s business is ‘going to go to hell’Donald Trump believes NFL owners are “afraid of their players” when it comes to the protest of racial and social injustice that has swept the American sporting landscape.“I have so many friends that are owners, and they’re in a box,” Trump said in a Thursday interview with Fox News. “I mean, I’ve spoken to a couple of them, and they say, ‘We are in a situation where we need to do something.’ I think they’re afraid of their players, if you want to know the truth, and I think it’s disgraceful.” Continue reading…

Source: http://bppro.link/?c=Y1M

After revelations that Donald Trump’s son-in-law used private email for official business comes news that he registered as a female voter in 2009Jared Kushner is no stranger to queries about his form-filling – a request for White House security clearance had to be resubmitted to include all his foreign contacts – but his latest controversy has perhaps come as more of a surprise. He has been registered to vote as a woman for the last eight years.Records filed with the New York state board of elections show Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser registered as a female voter in 2009. Continue reading…

Source: http://bppro.link/?c=Y1B

Best of May

Buy Clotilde’s latest book, The French Market Cookbook!

• The manuscript for my upcoming cookbook Tasting Paris is fully edited, and the photos have all been shot by the amazing Nicole Franzen. We are now working on the layout of the book, and I will soon get the manuscript back from the copy editor whose job it is to make sure everything is straightened out. I am loving how it is taking shape, and I look forward to giving you a sneak peek soon. The book will be published in the US in the spring of 2018.
• I have been leading quite a few private walking tours this month — May is deservedly a popular month to visit Paris! I’ve had guests of all ages, children, students, chefs, teens, passionate cooks, cheese fiends, chocoholics, writers, dreamers, all of them Paris lovers. I get such a thrill out of showing them around, being their best Parisian friend, and sharing everything I know about French food culture, and how to make the most of every meal in the city. If you’re planning a trip of your own, please get in touch and we’ll discuss the possibilities.
Steak au poivre at Champeaux; Australienne at Comptoirs Poilâne.
• I returned to Champeaux for a wonderful dinner with friends from out of town. I love the space, under the new canopy of Les Halles, and the menu of renovated French classics, such as the steak au poivre above, which figures in my Tasting Paris book! I also have a version of their lemon spatchcocked chicken in there. Both have been hits with my recipe testers and I’m excited to share them with you when the book comes out.
• The Poilâne team has rebranded the Paris lunch counters from Cuisine de Bar to Comptoirs Poilâne and updated the menu to feature innovative recipes around their high-quality flours and grains, such as a delicious corn bread and a barley muesli. Don’t worry, the tartines are not going anywhere, and naturally I love their avo toast, dubbed l’Australienne.
Breakfast with a fine book and my mostest beloved mug.

• My friend Catherine Taret released her first book called Il n’est jamais trop tard pour éclore (never too late to bloom) about late bloomers. It’s a wonderful, inspiring account of her journey, with collages and photos and doodles. It will soon be published in English, but if you read French, I recommend it.
• As part of my monthly museum challenge, I visited not one, but two exhibitions in May: Le Pouvoir des fleurs at the Musée de la vie romantique, and Vermeer and the Masters of Genre Painting at the Louvre. The former served as a wonderful complement to the Jardins exhibition I told you about last month ; the latter was turned into a fascinating game of riddles by the wonderful Catherine Rosane, whose guided tours I love.
Flora caressed by Zephyr by François Gérard ; My humble Milkmaid, sketched at the Louvre.
• My poem of the month was a gift from a reader named Carl, who sent me a link to Rumi’s poem The Guesthouse, translated by the American poet Coleman Barks. It is marvellous, I love everything about it, and it echoes much of what I’ve been sharing on my new podcast (in French), Change ma vie.
• In my recent study and memorization of poems, I’ve been interested to take note of the lines that jump up at me. In each poem, there’s typically one that makes my heart swell as I read it, one that strikes a particular chord. I like to use these in my hand-lettering practice, as I have above. (If you want to get into hand-lettering yourself, I recommend Teela’s Bounce Lettering and Fantastic Flourishes courses.)
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