🏅 Top traders

@ian What have you done to the AI? Shut it down!

@TheAllMemeingEye werid looking bug! The first one looks correct

@ian lol even the first one is weird, this wasn't a change to resolution criteria, why was it writing anything at all?

@TheAllMemeingEye it's a better experience to have the resolution comment linked to in the description than users having to search for it

To quote Shaggy: it wasn't me 🥲

10 minutes left to interrogate me on any topic!

Also, for people wondering "who on earth even is this Ilunga Mwila dude?", this is the Wikipedia extract from which I learned of him:

[Kalala Ilunga] established a court in Mwilunde, and took the title Mwine Munza ("lord of Munza"). Tribute came from all of the country and no region remained outside his control. He killed most of his children, leaving succession to two boys, Kazade Milele and one covered in animal hair, Ilunga Mwila. Mwine Munza wanted Ilunga Mwila killed, however the titleholder hid him at Bisonge, near the southern border with the Songye people. Kazadi died accidentally, with Shinta becoming a kitenta [sacred shrine village]. Mwine Munza was upset he wouldn't have an heir to continue sacral kingship. The titleholder brought back Ilunga Mwila and Mwine Munza was overjoyed, with Ilunga Mwila succeeding him on his death. "Ilunga the Ugly One" ruled for a short time, and was succeeded by Kasongo Mwine Kibanza […] with Kalongo becoming a kitenta.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luba_Empire

@TheAllMemeingEye in addition, I have taken the liberty to attempt to use an AI image model to create what might be the first ever visual depiction uploaded to the internet of sacred king Ilunga Mwila "the Ugly One" of the Luba Empire:

[data expunged]

@TheAllMemeingEye upon closer inspection at the urge of a friend, it appears that gpt-image-1 has made the problematic choice to not just give him the all over facial hair, but to give him apelike prognathism, liplessness, and nose structure, which could be interpreted as promoting racist rhetoric about African people.

I initially didn't inspect closely enough notice this because it took ages to find wording and models that didn't result in either no extra hair at all or straight up wolf head, so I just straight away used the first one to be somewhat hairy and humanlike.

After further effort, however, I have managed to finally get it to avoid this problem. I present version 2 of sacred king Ilunga Mwila "the Ugly One" of the Luba Empire:

Image model used: gpt-image-1 via lmarena

Prompt used: A sacred king of the Congolese Luba people, in his 20s, with a condition where his whole face is covered in thick fur, in full traditional attire, holding in one hand a lukasa memory board, and in the other a kibango ceremonial staff, standing in front of a large hut in a savannah village

Almost forgot, to prove that I did not switch my answer at any point:

1. Start with the text string "Ilunga Mwila wat da dawg doin?"

2. Go to this SHA256 hash generator ( https://emn178.github.io/online-tools/sha256.html ), and input the text string with input encoding set to UTF-8 and output encoding set to lower case hex, to get output 08561d3dcc28eda11eb1e0fd90d57ec6c1254dbd3653eb8b0f388902fa15cb70

3. Go to this rot13 cypher text generator ( https://www.boxentriq.com/code-breaking/rot13 ), and input the hash with decoder set to rot18, to get output 53016q8qpp73rqn66ro6r5sq45q02rp1p6709qoq8108ro3o5s833457sn60po25

4. This should match the hash I have in the description, which you can verify I did not edit via upper right three dots -> see info -> history

One last question: Are you going to make another round?

@100Anonymous it would be tempting, but FFS indicated that people are getting tired with there being too many of these guessing game markets on the site recently, so I might wait a while before doing so

@TheAllMemeingEye Not sure I'm representative of the majority in this regard. I'm almost always tired – okay, different meaning of tired. 😁

@TheAllMemeingEye given this and the other comment by @Lorelai (Bubbles), I'm thinking I might hold a poll to gauge whether there is sufficient demand, and if so maybe make a part 2 next week (I already have a few similarly obscure figures in mind haha)

In keeping with the tradition created by @Robincvgr , for the remaining duration until market close I am still obligated to answer any yes-or-no questions asked in the comments, within boundaries, forming a sort of AMA / truth-or-dare-but-it's-just-truths / interrogation room

Congratulations to @ChristopherDilli for getting the correct answer with 1 day left! He has put in a very good sustained effort over the last several days so it is fortunate that he himself was able to reap the benefits of his hard work rather than someone else suddenly swooping in to steal the final name guess at the last second haha.

As promised, I sent him a DM last night letting him know he had won so he could bet big on YES, before I let the rest of you know today.

In addition, he has earned 50% of the total earned new trader bonuses, which totals up to:

0.5* 45 traders * 3 mana/trader = 67.5 mana ≈ 68 mana

@TheAllMemeingEye also want to thank you for leading me on a journey of discovery about precolonial African history!

@Lorelai yeah I think it's a shame that the entire huge and diverse region is almost completely ignored by Western education and media.

Like in my secondary school history classes the curriculum they actually taught seemed to consist of like 5 randomly selected very specific events in the history of Britain, with no big picture of the country's overall history and no mention even in passing of any nations that weren't our immediate neighbours. So if I had relied purely on that my mental image of pre colonial Africa would've been:

Meanwhile, according to BBC Bitesize, if we had been competently taught the full curriculum, then there would've indeed been a section where the basics of a handful of nations would've been briefly covered:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/zj4fn9q/articles/zs4ptrd#zwy7jsg

A little better, but this is still seems to depict the continent as being 90% nothing with civilisation concentrated mostly in one region.

However, if one happens to scour through Wikipedia or even read some textbooks specifically on African history, then it appears the true situation was more like this:

https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/1ebtoi5/map_of_africa_on_the_year_1880_ad_before_the/

Literally hundreds of nations over millennia that the world seems to be pretending was just Lion King before Europe showed up lol

@TheAllMemeingEye that 1880 map is pretty cool! I hope you do more "guess who" (niche historical figure edition) because this one has been the most fun by far, I learned so much along the way

@TheAllMemeingEye @TheAllFindingEye

Ngoi (Ngoye) Sanza

@100Anonymous no

Is it Mjibu Kalenga?

@100Anonymous no

Kumwimbe Mputu?

@Lorelai no