DAILY PHOTO: Hanoi’s Train Street by Night

PROMPT: Searched for Online

Daily writing prompt
What was the last thing you searched for online? Why were you looking for it?

I ask AI what kind of economic system can work when machines / AI do virtually all productive tasks better than humans — such that humans can no longer sell their labor for money to buy goods and other services. (i.e. the backbone of economies as we’ve known them.) I ask because it’s an extremely important question whose answer is completely without precedent. Those who say it’ll be like a new, bigger, better Industrial Revolution are full of shit. It was not hard to imagine the work domain left to humans during the Industrial Revolution- unless you were a proper Luddite. When we hit the aforementioned inflection point, however distant it may or may not be, it will be an entirely different matter.

It’s a little like asking a real estate developer what will happen to you and your neighbors when they tear down your subdivision to build a golf course, but the AI is a little less defensive. When the AI is equally defensive, we’ll know we’re screwed.

DAILY PHOTO: Shrine Near Ngoc Son Temple on a Rainy Morning

Cloud Avalanche [Haiku]

clouds fill the valley:
a gauzy avalanche
in slow motion.

Sun Tinged [Haiku]

mountain snow:
tinged orange
by sunrise.

DAILY PHOTO: Garden of Dreams, Kathmandu

Image

“Thou Strainest Through the Mountain Fern” (A Fragment) by William Wordsworth [w/ Audio]

Thou strainest through the mountain fern,
A most exiguously thin
Burn.
For all thy foam, for all thy din,
Thee shall the pallid lake inurn,
With well-a-day for Mr. Swin-
Burne!
Take then this quarto in thy fin
And, O thou stoker huge and stern,
The whole affair, outside and in,
Burn!
But save the true poetic kin,
The works of Mr. Robert Burn'
And William Wordsworth upon Tin-
Tern!

PROMPT: TV Shows

Daily writing prompt
What TV shows did you watch as a kid?

Andy Griffith Show, Carol Burnett Show, Dick Van Dyke Show… wow, they were not creative with names in those days.

BOOK: “How to be an Alien” by George Mikes

How to Be an Alien: A Handbook for Beginners and Advanced PupilsHow to Be an Alien: A Handbook for Beginners and Advanced Pupils by George Mikes
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Publisher Site – Penguin

This book is hilarious… unless you’re British — in which case it probably reads like a swift kick in the crotch. Well, if you’re from continental Europe, many of the comparisons with Britian are no more favorable to Europe and are just as comically searing. But if you’re American, it’s a laugh riot. Well, except for when it delivers reminders of the absurdity of xenophobia, triggering realizations that one’s own country is in the midst of a crisis of that malady. However, the book is not primarily a rebuke of xenophobia, but rather an accounting of what immigrants to Britain find strange and unwieldy about their new country.

George Mikes, born Mikes György, was a journalist and humorist of Hungarian birth who lived most of his life in England, and it’s this experience that the author draws upon to describe of what immigrants to Britain must accustom themselves.

Among Mikes’ prolific body of writings, there are a number that take this form — humor disguised as a how-to guide. The first one that I read was How to Be God, which was his last such book. The book under review was his first and continues to be the most popular.

I’d highly recommend this book for humor readers… unless you’re British… or European… or are experiencing dread over the Pheonix-like rebirth of xenophobia in the world. If there’s any one left after that who reads in English, this is the book for you.

View all my reviews

DAILY PHOTO: Church in the Backwaters