The Distance
This is a playing around piece. Over on Linda G. Hill’s blog via Laura’s WTFAIOA site, we’re all invited to write a non-edited stream of consciousness thing prompted by ‘distance’. So here we are. It was fun.
The distance doesn’t start or end, it’s just there with a space between us as we flash down the road, close and far apart as ever, going again to a place we were before hoping it’s the same place even while we seek something different. We travel the same distance when we talk about her mother and my mom and people we’ve known and what was done when. The drive ends as it began with a sense of wonder what’s going on and an expectation that somehow, this changes things. Sometimes it does but mostly, we are here again, pacing the distance, measuring it for curtains, prowling it at night.
The New Music
The exercise instructor had used new music for the class. Beginning the cool down session, she asked her students, “What did you think of that music?”
An older woman in the front row yelled, “More cowbell.”
The class lost it.
Ethology
Ethology
Ring
Ping
ChimeHeads turn
Conversations slowFeeding
CommencesDigestion
FinishesAgendas
ResumeWhere were we?
At the Store
I was going through the frozen food section, toying with the idea of buying ice cream. This was definitely an impulse thing. Although several interesting flavors called me, I wasn’t sure I was going to buy any.
A couple shopping behind me had some frozen object in hand. He said, “This says it’s three and a half servings.”
“Three and a half!” The woman laughed. “No way. I’ll just eat that myself.”
She tossed the item into their cart and they moved on.
I smiled. We’ve all been there.
The Morning eMail
My wife heaved a sigh. She’d just come into the home office with her tea and settled down on her computer to check her email.
“My NYTimes is again in my junk folder, along with Ashland News,” she announced. “Two pieces of junk mail are in my inbox.”
“It’s probably the AI that’s supposed to be so helpful,” I answer. She laughs.
Complaints about her emails have been going all week. She uses Hotmail, which is now Outlook. Or maybe it’s the other way. Whatever you call it, she’s displeased with its performance. Every day, she has to check to see where her trusted emails have gone and delete the spam that now hits her inbox. As a product, the Hotmail/Outlook app seems to be going backwards.
It’s not consistent, either. It first started with her saying last Monday, “I didn’t get my NYTimes newsletter.” Then she said, “I found it in my junk mail.” That continued for several days before it went back to her inbox. That’s when Ashland News went to junk mail.
“I don’t understand,” my wife said. “Why is it doing this?”
A search of the net suggests many ways to try to fix this problem. None of them mentioned why the problem began. I decided to use AI to see what it said. ChatGPT blamed new adaptive AI which Microsoft introduced last year.
I passed that on to my wife, who laughed. “Great. AI is screwing up my email. What a perfect metaphor.”
I laughed, too. “I don’t know how much I trust of what one AI says about the other. It’s like wondering, what does your wife think of your girlfriend?”
Michael Seidel, writer 