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Reblog: “Bent Out of Shape”: About a Cell Phone Right Out of the Fred Flintstone Era
This is a reblog of “Bent out of Shape,” the story of how my old cell phone’s battery swelled up and posed a risk of exploding in my ear. OK, it never did and that’s a good thing. I had that stone-age phone for so long, you’d think I’d have just bought a new one.…
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Big Shoes Friday Blues Show is a Kickin’ Mule!
Last night I finally got it straight from host Ed English what the new name is for the Friday night blues show on KCCK-FM. It’s the Big Shoes Friday Blues Show. Ed has a lot of good energy, his voice is bright, he’s smart, and he makes sure that women and local blues artists get…
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Reblog of Post “Maybe I Should Be More Optimistic About Humans”
This is a reblog regarding my thoughts on July 13, 2023 about humans and Artificial Intelligence (AI). Marvin the Paranoid Android had a brain the size of a planet. I have a brain the size of a chickpea. I point out this comparison in the post. I still have doubts about how smart AI really…
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WordPress Happiness Engineer Makes My Day!
It was beginning to look like I was probably not going to get human assistance with managing my new blog theme, but the WordPress Happiness Engineer saved the day! By the way, after I switched, I couldn’t find my old classic theme listed anywhere. So, even if I wanted to flip back to it, I…
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All That Digital News
I guess you have to be a certain age to develop the habit of doomscrolling. I’m not minimizing the problem. I just can’t see how anybody gets into it. I’m talking about digital news websites. It’s a tableau of yawners every day. It’s full of models, goggle-eyed golden retrievers, and ads for knuckle removers (“Do…
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AI Chatbots and Psychiatry: Embrace or Dislodge?
I’ve just finished reading a couple of online articles about Chatbot use by patients who then present either to psychiatrists or psychotherapists (not that they can’t be one and the same!) and I’m a little puzzled. The title of my blog post came partly from what my wife, Sena, always says about Artificial Intelligence—which is…
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Dave Barry Beats TV
I’ve been sitting here reading Dave Barry’s book, “Best State Ever: A Florida Man Defends His Homeland.” It was published in 2016 and every time I read something from it, I laugh my fool head off. I used to have more than 20 of Barry’s non-fiction books. Now I have only this one. The others…
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The Case of the Loose SD Memory Card Switch
This is not an April Fools joke, just to let you know. I just returned the second of two SD memory cards for our Nikon camera this morning. I returned the first one about a week ago. I got refunds. These cards are expensive and can set you back a hundred bucks or more. They…
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Replace Sycophantic AI with Marvin the Paranoid Android?
I found the perfect JAMA article explaining that sycophancy is programmed into Artificial Intelligence (AI) therapy chatbots. This reminded me of Marvin the paranoid android (“Life! Don’t talk to me about life!”) in the book series “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” by Douglas Adams. Marvin is an incredibly depressed robot who would never make…
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Confabulation in Artificial Intelligence
I saw an excellent post on Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Dr. George Dawson’s post today, “The Problems With AI Are More Readily Apparent.” He mentions AI producing confabulations which are sometimes called hallucinations in AI. I distinguish hallucinations from confabulations because the former are sensory or perceptual problems while confabulations are making things up. In…
Go Retire Psychiatrist 