A “conversation” with a chatbot

“I like movies that are realistic. I like movies that are romantic. I like movies that are about us”: from The New York Times, the transcript of a reporter’s two-hour “conversation” with Microsoft Bing’s A.I. chatbot. That's the bot talking about movies. It’s more than slightly unnerving.

As I said to my son this morning, I’ve had it with thinking about chatbots as part of the world I want to live in. A line from Ted Berrigan’s poem “Mi Casa, Su Casa” sums it up: “‘I want human to begin with.’” And thereafter.

Related posts
A 100-word blog post generated by ChatGPT : I’m sorry too, ChatGPT : Spot the bot : Teachers and chatbots : Imaginary lines from real poems : ChatGPT writes about Lillian Mountweazel : Rob Zseleczky on computer-generated poetry : ChatGPT’s twenty-line poems : Edwin Mullhouse fail

[In the poem, the line is in quotation marks: quoted speech?]

Gentleman ?

Rehema Ellis, talking on MSNBC earlier this afternoon about proceedings in a Buffalo courtroom: “The gentleman did apologize.”

Perhaps Ellis didn’t want to say his name. Neither do I. But gentleman has got to go. The gunman did apologize. The killer did apologize. Or said that he apologized.

Garner’s Modern English Usage on gentleman :

Gentleman should not be used indiscriminately as a genteelism for man , the generic term. Gentleman should be reserved for reference to a cultured, refined man.

Never for reference to a mass murderer.

Mystery actor

[Click for a larger view.]

Leave a guess — or something more certain — in the comments. I’ll drop a hint if one seems to be needed.

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Here’s a hint before I head out on a walk: this actor is known for playing a character for whom the bell tolled. Ding. Ding. Ding.

More mystery actors
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Recently updated

O.B. Rude Drug Co. Now with a 1922 ad for mail-order pharmaceuticals. Rude had quite a reach.

Valentine’s Day

[Peanuts, February 14, 1976. Click for a larger view.]

Today’s Peanuts is yesterday’s Peanuts.

[Today I am thinking about blog posts as respite from current events — another campus, another shooting. Another and another and another.]

Valentine’s Day

[Green glass heart amulet. From Egypt, 21st–25th Dynasty, ca. 1070–664 B.C. 2.2 × W. 1.6 cm (7/8 × 5/8 in.). Gift of Helen Miller Gould, 1910. Metropolitan Museum of Art. From the online collection. Click for a larger view.]

More about amulets and the heart, or ib, at this museum page.

Changing jobs

Zippy, as Griffy deconstructs the concept of narrative continuity in today’s Zippy  : “Is it too late to work for Hi & Lois?”

Venn reading
All OCA Hi and Lois posts : Hi and Lois and Zippy posts : Zippy posts (Pinboard)

Jury doody

I have been summoned for jury duty, petit not grand, beginning today. So I called in last night to see if I was needed today. “Over 100 people are calling this number, so you may experience busy signals,” the summons said. “Please be patient and try again.”

I tried for five-and-a-half hours last night, calling close to 300 times before getting through, after getting busy signals, silence, or “Verizon cannot complete . . . busy.” Yes, more than 100 people were calling.

It’s 2023. Is there a good reason for courts not to post the necessary information online, protected, perhaps, by a password?

*

Later this same morning: I learned that today is a court holiday. No trials. So why were potential jurors required to call in last night?

NBC, sheesh

In quotation marks, large letters filling the screen on NBC Nightly News:

“radar anomoly”

*

February 13: I went to get a screenshot and found that it’s been corrected, in a different font.

Related reading
All OCA sheesh posts (Pinboard)

The Harlem Branch Y

From Langston Hughes’s “Theme for English B,” from the book-length sequence Montage of a Dream Deferred (1951). The writer (not “speaker”) has been given an assignment: write a page, “And let that page come out of you — / Then, it will be true.” He wonders if it’s that simple:


Here’s the poem. Imagine being an instructor and getting that page in response to an assignment.

The college is the City College of New York at 160 Convent Avenue. The park is St. Nicholas Park. Eighth Avenue is now Frederick Douglass Boulevard; Seventh, now Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard. And here is the Y:

[Harlem Branch YMCA, 180 West 135th Street, New York, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

The Y still stands. When I taught this poem, I liked to use Google Maps to follow the poem’s path (though one can’t get across the park by map). And I liked to play samples to give a sense of the writer’s eclectic musical interests: “Bessie, bop, or Bach,” his own three Bs. I didn’t know about the tax photos in the NYC Municipal Archives then.

Here’s some Harlem Branch Y history, with Hughes, Ralph Ellison, Jackie Robinson, Cicely Tyson, and Wesley A. Williams.

*

It occurred to me only today that Hughes‘s poem fits perfectly on one typed page.

Related reading
More OCA posts with photographs from the NYC Municipal Archives