Mean Kings: NaNoGenMo non-fiction

[dluman]

To the title -- well, kinda.

I'm still working on my other ridiculously stupid idea (#7), but as I get frustrated there, I turn to another smaller project: Mean Kings.

The goal here is to crawl Wikipedia for articles on ancient rulers, perform sentiment analysis on the articles and tell readers who was (or maybe wasn't) a mean king and some reasons why.

This idea found genesis as an idea for a bot that my partner and I once had, but never found its expression. Maybe I'll turn it into a bot after this. Probably.

[dluman]

Just using Wikipedia as a main corpus, initial work isn't so bad, though I'd like to get some invention in there via text generation of some sort:

I recall Rib-Hadda. That was one mean king. His name is Akkadian in form and may invoke the god Hadad, though his letters invoke only Ba'alat Gubla, the "Lady of Byblos" (probably another name for Asherah).

[dluman]

At the risk of annoying folks watching the thread, it's evolving (as if people were watching this thread):

I'd be remiss if I forgot Ashur-dan II. We could learn from their example. The accounts conclude with Ashur-Dan building activities, stressing that he did not exploit the spoils of his campaign to enrich himself, but rather to honor and exalt the gods.

[dluman]

I did my last work on this one about two weeks ago, and then just sat on it. To be sure I at least complete one thing this year, here's a link to the first version of the final output, though I'd be happy to pick at it again before December if I have a spare moment to vary some of the dialogue stems and guarantee a bit better output/sentiment analysis. I'd like to try spaCy versus NLTK, but for now:

The "first best draft" final text

A particular cohesive, detailed entry:

Those of you up on your history know Jie of Xia. Now that was one mean king.

And while he was drinking wine it was required that he ride on someone’s back like a horse. About the same time, he destroyed the pyramid of Rong (容台), and quelled a rebellion by the Quanyi people (aka Fei Barbarians) after they entered Qi, near Fen. Jie ascended to the throne in the year of Renchen (壬辰). Despite this setback, Shang continued to expand on a number of fronts, gathering vassal troops in Jingbo (景亳). He received an envoy from the Qizhong barbarian people(歧踵戎) . Tang of Shang succeeded as king by Tang, who inaugurated the Shang Dynasty. His parents were Fa of Xia and his wife. The people working for him who could not supply this drink were killed. The Shang army and allied forces conquered Mixu (密須) (today's 密縣), Wei, and attacked Gu (顧), which was also conquered the following year. In his 13th year of the ruling, he moved his capital from Zhenxun to Henan. He drank a type of pure alcohol wine (清醇). In the 11th year, he summoned all his vassals to his court. Han shi waizhuan (韓詩外傳) scroll 2. King Jie of Xia 夏桀王Jie with a Ji, representing oppression, and sitting on two ladies, symbolizing his abuse of power. In the 15th year of Jie’s reign, Tang of Shang began moving Lü (履) to the capital Bo. About two years later Shang sent his minister Yi Yin as an envoy to Jie. Records from the later Qin Dynasty say that during the last year of Jie’s reign, ice formed during the summer mornings and frost occurred through July. He is traditionally regarded as a tyrant and oppressor who brought about the collapse of a dynasty. In the 26th year of Jie’s reign, Shang conquered Wen. King Jie had no known children with his wives. His given name was Lü Gui (履癸). Around the same time Zhong Gu, chief historian of Jie, fled from the Xia to the Shang. He lived there for three years and constructed his tilt palace. Several hundred people were employed just to supply Jie with his meals. The Shang’s power continued to grow. In one speech Tang of Shang said that creating chaos is not something he wanted, but given the terror of Jie, he has to follow the mandate of heaven and use this opportunity to overthrow Xia. He asked Emperor Jie to spare him. Among other things, she liked to drink, enjoyed music, and also had a penchant for jugglers and sing-song girls. Vegetables had to come from the northwest, fish had to be from the East Sea, seasonings and sauces had to come from ginger that grew in the south, sea salt had to come from the north. Jie was also a known alcoholic, but he did not drink regular wine. Around 1600 BCE, Jie was defeated by Tang of Shang, bringing an end to the Xia Dynasty that lasted about 500 years, and a rise to the new Shang Dynasty. About that time, he began using the Nian (輦), or sedan chair, on which he was carried by servants. Anyone that got his meal wrong was beheaded. During Jie's reign, Shang grew in power, initially at the expense of Xia's other vassals. He also pointed out that even Jie’s own military generals would not obey his orders. In one incident Jie was riding the back of a top chancellor like a horse. These began in the 10th year of Jie’s reign, when five stars were seen in the sky in alignment and a meteor shower occurred, followed by an earthquake.

[dluman]

As mentioned, I turned this into the bot that I referenced above:

https://twitter.com/mean_kings