The End of the Age of Reality

 It has come to my attention that the age of reality has ended. No longer can we trust seeing to be an avenue towards belief. Our senses are just the next in a long line of things we can fool. Internet "intelligence" can now make a video with me as the star, delivering lines and executing flawless dance moves. But my dance moves in real life are flawed! That's what makes me, me.

You know how, in the sci fi movies, some gets "uploaded to the cloud"? That's happening now. You can take an untrained LLM, feed it on anything and everything you have written and it should then be able to answer questions and hold conversations using only your brain as the training material. Stick it with a voice cloning service and you can make a movie or a TED talk in which I present my actual points of view. The limit? AI can't capriciously change its mind, and the "me" online can't innovate new ideas and positions without running afoul of my actual (possibly irrational) positions on things.

But effectively, my identity can be cloned to the cloud (because I, possibly a poor example, tend to express myself in writing). But the bottom line is that we will be seeing movies with AI actors, hearing from celebrities long dead as they opine on current events and who knows what else. Just seeing something, or hearing it does not certify that anything is actual and extant. Our hold on reality, tenuous already, now gets thrown out of the window. We can have computers create pictures, videos, songs and anything else so our position as the arbiters of what is "real" and "true" is eroded by our quest for a lazy lifestyle in which a robot or computer does all the hard work.

It isn't a good thing, people!

Let's say you accuse me of something. How hard is it to mock up a supporting video? I can't make you believe I didn't do something so all you will have is my word against an actual video. Which have we been conditioned to believe? Let's go to the video tape.

I will take this lying down

and with a side of salt, please.

Many years ago, I was led to believe that one burns calories while one sleeps. In fact, I had an entire post about that exact claim!

https://rosends.blogspot.com/2011/12/calorie-recount.html

Yes, there it is, older than a lot of people.

Last night, as I was wandering around, looking for a hobby, I recalled that I had a digital scale which I bought for myself against sound medical advice. I disrobed (I had been wearing dis robe) and climbed aboard. The number that flashed at me was 187.6. That's respectable if my goal is to be 187.4. That, however, is not my goal. I generally don't have time to eat during the day so by just eating dinner, I aim to lose approximately one hundred and forty percent of my current weight. I am willing to compromise on the goal, but not eating seems to be one way to get there. I went to bed with a light heart because I knew that in the morning, after a rigorous night of restless legs and cold sweats, I would trim down even more. So when I finally worked up the courage to face the day, I leapt out of bed and strode to the scale. I rose up and took a look: 190.

190. That is, by my rough estimate, more than what I weighed before bed. Now, maybe I munched on some food, but this would mean I ate enough calories (and other measures of yumminess) to account for all my night burning, and add over 2 pounds to my "me." While I slept.

It seems the tooth fairy has teamed up with Mr. Sandman and the happy little elves to stuff me with food while I sleep. I can think of no other logical explanations. I don't "sleep eat" as that is ridiculous to consider. All that is left is the paranatural or the supernormal. I don't make the rules.

An Anti-Social experiment

Long time viewers know my stance on birthdays. I hate 'em and that's a fact. Now, new viewers can know as well. I hate birthdays. But for years, in an attempt to be connected socially with other humanz, I made sure to wish people a "happy birthday" on Facebook. FB does a nice job of listing people whose birthday it is, so wishing them good tidings etc. is pretty easy.

So I did it. For years, I wrote little messages and sent images of balloons and monkeys and whatnot. Sometimes I got a "thank you" and sometimes I felt included in a mass "thank you." But you know what, I decided to try something. I decided to stop wishing people a happy birthday on Facebook, just to see if it would make any difference in the world. I did (or didn't) do it for a year, giving each person the same opportunity to be ignored. Would this really cause any consequence? Does anyone really care?

Now, there is starving in Sudan so I might have to go back to saying Happy Birthday to people.

Thank me very much

I figure that, at this point in my career, I'm clearly never going to be someone's inspiration. No giver of life-changing advice or an unintentional pep talk from the heart, I'm not going to be the teacher named from the podium at some awards show as "the reason I became a ___________."

So in anticipation of this, I present my suggestion as to how I can be incorporated into a "thank you" speech, relying only on my continued mediocrity:

"I remember, I had a teacher...high school, I think it was...I forget his name but I know, and life has shown, that he had no specific negative impact on my growth, maturation and success. I am where I am today because had no effect on my life! Thank you for being irrelevant, Mr. Whatever-your-name-is!

Kintsugi-vision

I watch television a lot but not for the reason you think. I'm not sitting there letting it drive my consciousness like some sort of sheep. Instead, I am studying it because I care about understanding my world and watching major league kickball.

I have been thinking about TV shows and what it is I am actually watching. I think that the point of some shows is to highlight actions, and others highlight characters. I watch doctor shows not to learn medicine or even to watch my heroes save the day, taking some crazy risk or pulling out some unexpected diagnosis, but to see what my hero is like in his downtime.

Is he hurting? Does he mess up? Does he have fears? That's what make people, people. I can more closely relate to this character because of his fallibility -- it validates my own. And does that character persevere? In some way, he continues to wake up and live a life and that gives me hope that I can do something similar, as I am saddled with more limited challenges. That heroic behavior inspires me to be heroic and continue to live.

The (super)hero often becomes super (in attitude, action or something else) because of a human trauma. Maybe MY tragedy can ME better!

When the superhero is a boy scout in his down time then I'm bored. Let me see him stub his toe, or get the wrong order from that Chinese place, or lose his phone. Or job.

TV is the story of the golden glue, not the vase.

Friends

 There is a story which makes the rounds in Jewish circles regarding the origin of the Unetaneh Tokef prayer. I will include an image from the Artscroll machzor. It is blurry but, hey, these days, who isn't? nowutimean?

This is the text as it reads on the OU website, "The Bishop of Mainz summoned Rabbi Amnon, a great Torah scholar, to his court and offered him a ministerial post on the condition that Rabbi Amnon would convert to Christianity. Rabbi Amnon refused. The Bishop insisted and continued to press Rabbi Amnon to accept his offer. Of course, Rabbi Amnon continued to refuse. One day, however, Rabbi Amnon asked the Bishop for three days to consider his offer."

Compare that to the Museum of the Jewish People, "...about rabbi Amnon of Mainz who was a friend of the local Christian ruler, who urged him again and again to convert to Christianity. Whether out of fear, courtesy, or sincere intentions, rabbi Amnon promised his friend he will consider it for three days. Then he felt deep remorse and suffered a lot. When the time came, he tried to avoid the bishop, who was surprised at his friend’s behavior, and soon sent people to force him in. Rabbi Amnon then begged his friend to cut off his tongue that made him utter the words he regretted so much."

If you can make your way through the image or look in the Museum write up, you will see that the relationship between the Bishop and the rabbi was marked by the word "friend."

I'm not one who is especially expert on the range of relationships that can be called "friendship" but if the connection to the "other" makes multiple amputations possible, I would suggest that the word "friend" might not be the best choice to characterize the bond.

This is why I don't have friends. I like my arms where they are.

small change

I recently got deferred from a blood donation program -- not for a bad reason, mind you, as I simply had donated blood too recently for them to allow me to donate again. They thanked me for the attempt and sent me on my way with a $50 debit card. Nice deal, right?

So I take the free $50 and go over to Amazon to see what the world has for me. I don't generally buy things for myself, so when I get what is effectively free money, I splurge. I made sure, as I assembled my order, to keep the total under $50 as I had no intention of spending what is actually my own money. This was house money. So I ended up with an order which was somewhere in the $47 range.

This isn't the first time -- I have gotten cards like this for various promotions and each time, I use up an amount close to the max, but not the whole thing. Then, as is my practice, I put the card aside and forget about it. What use is a card with a buck or three on it? I'm not going out to buy penny candy so that money is as good as inaccessible. And with the number of cards with which I have engaged in the last 2 years, I am sure that if I collected them all and had some way to check their balances, I would be able to piece together a solid ten or twelve bucks.

But I don't have all the cards, I don't remember how to access each one and I'm way too lazy to try any harder. And therefore, somewhere there is some amount of money which is legally mine but which I am apparently "leaving on the table." So here's my deal:

I will continue doing this but will work to stack up the cards.

You will buy all the cards off of me and take upon yourself the work of discovering how much is left on each. You can keep all of that but I will ask for an up front payment of what I am confident is less than half of the total potential value of the cards. Same with random gift cards, but then, I would only charge a quarter of what I suspect is on each.

Takers?