Westwhirled

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ Leave a comment
Just ask the guys at the shop how that whole robotic-workforce thing is working out for them. (BRAIN/2018)

A couple weeks back, while trying to discover what exactly the fuck was up with the “Report” button that mysteriously appeared next to “Reply” in comments, I found myself wandering through the bleak, shabby A.I. wilderness, like Ted and the gang in Harlan Ellison’s “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream.”

I still had a mouth, and I was screaming, albeit virtually. But at whom?

First at bat was a bot, because of course it was. They reign supreme in Lower Supportistan and Customerservicesylvania. This level is tasked with solving the easy problems, which mostly I am not. Ask any publisher.

With the bot dispatched, next up was a WordPress “Happiness Engineer.” Could’ve been from MeatWorld®, maybe ESL with an A.I. assist, but felt slightly off, like the HAL 9000 from “2001: A Space Odyssey.” The greatest enthusiasm and confidence in the mission, etc. Or maybe the reassuring, yet slightly menacing drone of The President from “I Think We’re All Bozos on This Bus.” Occasionally one longs for a Marvin the Paranoid Android from “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.”

Still, one never knows. Automattic (with its sidekicks WordPress, Akismet, Jetpack, et al.) has big feet, one in MeatWorld® and the other on the Infobahn. So I dialed back the attitude, got a side of actual help with the platitudes, fired off an email to Akismet support, and went about my business.

Until I got a chipper reply from Akismet’s “Happy Bot” asking whether I was happy too. Ignoring that earned me a followup from — well, I have no idea what. Happy Bot ratted me out to someone, or something, which asked:

Since we haven’t heard back, we’re just checking in to see if the AI-generated response answered all your questions. Our goal is to ensure you get the help you need efficiently. If you require additional support from one of our experts, please reply to this email.

Well. Shit. Lead with your chin, why don’t you? So reply I did, recapitulating the original snark-laden complaint that led me down this digital rabbit hole.

And finally, I got an actual human response.

I think.

Which brings me to this piece in The Atlantic by Charlie Warzel. He writes:

Across so many levels of culture, there’s a feeling of control slipping ever so slightly away. You, me, all of us, whether or not we enjoy or use these tools, are living through a crisis of agency. The agita and paranoia, even the excitement—over AI’s encroachment on work, education, art, and culture—is the by-product of a cultural and technological moment in which humans are sliding into a more passive role in many activities. One way to look at the generative-AI boom is as a massive societal experiment foisted on us by Silicon Valley, the animating question of which is: What is a human for?

There’s much more to it, of course. And you should definitely read the Sam Kriss essay Warzel links to.

The Jetpack “Happiness Engineer” who was my last point of contact regarding this gripe professed humanity. My suspicions about the use of British spellings and semicolons were addressed (my correspondent mentioned having lived in the UK, writing detective novels on the side, and happily claimed semicolon usage as “proof of life”).

And my problem with the “Report” button? It too was addressed, and resolved:

Where things stand now: the developers who built this feature evaluated the results and determined it wasn’t delivering enough value to justify the concerns it raised, including exactly the kind of concerns you described. The Report button has been completely removed. It is no longer appearing on any site, including yours, regardless of your Akismet settings. You don’t need to do anything.

Y’hear that? I don’t need to do anything.

So … I’m happy? I guess. I think so. Yeah, sure, I’m happy.

But isn’t that exactly what they want? (Cue the spooky music. …)

Today in hisssssssstory

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 11 Comments
The devil you say. …

Today in history, from The Associated Press:

On May 30, 2024, Donald Trump became the first former American president to be convicted of felony crimes as a New York jury found him guilty of all 34 charges in a scheme to illegally influence the 2016 election through a hush money payment to a porn actor who said the two had sex.

Also on this date: In 1431, Joan of Arc, condemned as a heretic, was burned at the stake in Rouen, France.

Sorry about that, Joan. In a righteous world you would have lived to a ripe old age and this other would have been a fatty chunk of long pig sputtering on the grill.

The cat’s meow

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 7 Comments
Miss Mia Sopaipilla once again enjoys a full complement of servants.

We’re finally back to what passes for normal around here.

Herself has returned from Tennessee and Miss Mia Sopaipilla couldn’t be happier. I’m not the person you want to see first thing in the early morning hours, when the Voices are in full throat, roaring for coffee and news, the cacophony just a few decibels short of drowning out the clicking, popping, and squeaking of various OE bits from 1954 announcing their imminent failure. And with the factory warranty long since expired, too.

I lack a certain ruthless efficiency at stupid-thirty. Stack a few extra chores atop my tiny little pile and I am prone to mutter about Sisyphus as the rocks start rolling downhill.

I do manage to achieve some sort of spastic rhythm after a few days catching bad hops in the valley. But it’s not a pretty thing to watch.

Especially for Miss Mia. For openers, I like my coffee black, to match my aura, while Herself will share a dollop of frothy cream from her cuppa. I’ll pour Miss Mia a shot straight from the container, but it’s not the same. So off she goes, stalking from room to room, looking for Herself and that fat mug of cream with just a hint of coffee.

Never you mind that the litter box is cleaned and the water refreshed, food and meds served up, bedding shaken out. These are services, to be expected. It’s the little extras that make the difference between living and merely existing.

Eventually Miss Mia cycles through the Two Stages of Feline Grief: “I want something,” and “Fuck it, I’ll take a nap.”

And then I can finally have my coffee. Black.

Rain, dawg

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 7 Comments
Take it to “The Bridge,” Sonny.

When it rains, it pours, as the fella says.

I bet a lot of backyard ’Burque barbecues wound up in the kitchen yesterday. The rain started in midafternoon, laid about a half inch on us in four hours, then took five for the holiday.

When I stumbled out of bed this morning at stupid-thirty our weather gizmo reported (drum roll, please) another half inch overnight. No wonder I slept so well. Rain is a fine thing for sleeping. Also for farms, forests, and other living things, as long as they’re not sleeping rough in an arroyo.

Any morning you wake up on the right side of a damp lawn is a good one.

Sonny Rollins didn’t make it to Tuesday. But he left his mark in a big way before heading west yesterday at the age of 95. The giant of the tenor sax had such a commitment to the music that he put his career on hold before it really took hold, because he wasn’t satisfied with his sound.

In 1959 he stepped away from the clubs and the studio and just played, often come nightfall at the Williamsburg Bridge near his place on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. And he stayed gone for two years.

“A lot of people couldn’t comprehend why I would stop playing,” he told DownBeat magazine in 2001. “But I learned something. It was necessary for me to do to have the kind of confidence I need to play music like this.”

His comeback album was called “The Bridge.”

Sonny would slip away once more, that time for a spiritual pilgrimage, but he came back and kept reaching, hoping to grasp. A Saxophone Colossus indeed.

In Memoriam: William F. White Jr.

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 18 Comments
Heather and Bill White in 1996.

She was set to retire in a couple of weeks. He was going to buy her a grill and show her how to use it.

But then what seemed to be a minor bout with some seasonal bug — fatigue, shortness of breath, surely nothing to fret about — became something else altogether.

They went to the ER instead of Home Depot. And seven days later, he was gone.

• • •

William F. White Jr. of Smyrna, Tenn., died May 17 of complications from bone cancer. He was 77.

Bill met my sister-in-law Heather F. Pigeon nearly four decades earlier, when a mutual friend introduced them at a Ruby Tuesday in Antioch, Tenn. He and Heather hit it off, and would’ve gone out together the very next night. But that was Bill’s birthday, and he had plans with his parents. So their first date got pushed back a week.

Two years later, on Aug. 4, 1990, they were married in Oak Ridge, a couple of months after Herself and I tied the knot at Hyde State Park near Santa Fe.

Bill was a Nashville boy. He was born there on March 4, 1949, and graduated from Hillsboro High School in 1967. Then Uncle Sam sent him on a road trip. He served in the U.S. Army from 1969 to ’72, including a year in Vietnam with the 1st Signal Brigade, 1st Infantry Division (The Big Red One). He was based first in Saigon as a typist before being sent to the field to disassemble signal towers.

“Wild Man.”

Back in the States with an honorable discharge, Bill attended Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro, graduating in 1977 with a business degree and the nickname “Wild Man.”

In 1985 he joined Horizon Wine and Spirits, going on to win many sales awards over a 30-year career. The owner of one store on his route said he always looked forward to Bill’s calls because he was the only sales rep he liked.

It saddens me to say that Bill and I didn’t really get to know each other well — Herself and I saw more of Heather than Bill, even after he retired in 2015. But I can see why that store owner enjoyed visiting with him. For a wild man and a sales rep, Bill was remarkably laid back.

We did have some things in common. More hair than was deemed respectable Back in the Day®. Nicknames. And nicotine. Bill kicked the habit after taking a work-sponsored smoking-cessation class — the only one of the 20 men in the class to finish it and kick those butts to the curb.

But his sport of choice was golf. Bill originally played in the men’s league at the Old Fort Golf Course in Murfreesboro, but finally shifted to the senior league, quipping that he “couldn’t hang with the young boys.”

An Eagle Scout (Troop 121, BSA, 1964), Bill also enjoyed hiking Tennessee’s state parks, visiting local farmers’ markets, and cooking. In recent years he’d tried his hand at baking, and cinnamon muffins became one of his faves. Heather loved them too.

• • •

Maggie.

Bill is survived by his wife of 35 years, Heather F. White of Smyrna; a brother, Donald White, and sister, Linda White, both of Nashville; in-laws Beth and Darren Morgan of Woodsboro, Md., the two of us here in Albuquerque; and Magdalene, an 18-year-old tabby cat. Bill and Heather parented eight cats in the years together and fostered many more.

He was preceded in death by his parents, William F. White Sr., and Nannie (Nan) Louise Whitfield White.

Funeral arrangements are pending. In lieu of flowers the family suggests donations to Second Harvest Food Bank of Middle Tennessee or WMOT Roots Radio.

But don’t anyone start a GoFundMe for the grill. Heather will buy that herself.