His parents look at the truck and ask, “Where did you get that truck?!”
“I bought it today,” he says.
“With what money?” says his mother.
They knew what a new F150 cost.
“Well,” he says, “this one cost me just fifteen dollars.”
The father looks at him like he’s crazy.
“Who would sell a truck like that for fifteen dollars?” he says.
“It was the lady up the street,” says the boy. “I don’t know her name – they just moved in. She saw me ride past on my bike and asked me if I wanted to buy her F150 for fifteen dollars.
“Oh my Goodness!” says the mother. “Maybe she’s mentally ill or has Alzheimer’s or something. John, you better go see what’s going on.”
So the boy’s father walks up the street to the house where the lady lives and finds her out in the yard calmly planting petunias.
He introduces himself as the father of the boy to whom she had sold a new Ford F150 truck for fifteen dollars and asks to know why she did it.
“Well,” she says, “two days ago my husband left on a business trip. Yesterday I got a phone call from his boss and found out that he really ran off to Hawaii with his secretary and doesn’t intend to come back.”
“Oh, my goodness, I’m so sorry,” the father says. “But what does that have to do with my son and your truck?”
“Well, this morning he called and told me he was stranded because he got robbed of his wallet with all his credit cards and cash. He told me to sell his new F150 and send him the money. So I did.”
Unfortunately, the locals always had a habit of picking on strangers, which he was. When he finished his drink, he found his horse had been stolen.
He went back into the bar, handily flipped his gun into the air, caught it above his head without even looking and fired a shot into the ceiling.
“Which one of you sidewinders stole my horse?!” he yelled with surprising forcefulness.
No one answered.
“Alright, I’m gonna have another beer, and if my horse ain’t back outside by the time I finish, I’m gonna do what I dun in Texas! And I don’t like to have to do what I dun in Texas!”
Some of the locals shifted restlessly.
The man, true to his word, had another beer, walked outside, and his horse has been returned to the post.
He saddled up and started to ride out of town.
The bartender wandered out of the bar and asked, “Say partner, before you go… what happened in Texas?”
The cowboy turned back and said, “I had to walk home.”
A guy goes to a psychiatrist. He tells the doctor that he has been having really strange dreams for a month, and they are driving him crazy. He says he is watching a hockey tournament but it’s donkeys that are playing. The doctor writes the guy a prescription and tells him to take 2 pills that evening before going to bed, and that he won’t have those dreams any longer.” The guy says “Doc, can I start the medicine tomorrow night because tonight is the final”?
There was a time when i maintained a jokes site. i always thought i’d make it big and get traffic and so on, but then again, i didn’t realize that the whole process of curating jokes for 20-30 minutes every day, was actually making my life better, because … well, you get to read jokes and have at least 20-30 minutes of laughter every day, regardless of how your day goes. So i am bringing back that tradition, by introducing the jokes stream in here.
Let’s begin with an old, but gold:
A lawyer married a woman who had previously divorced ten husbands.
On their wedding night, she told her new husband,
“Please be gentle, I’m still a virgin.”
“What?” said the puzzled groom.
“How can that be if you’ve been married ten times?”
“Well, Husband #1 was a sales representative: he kept telling me how great it was going to be.
Husband #2 was in software services: he was never really sure how it was supposed to function, but he said he’d look into it and get back to me.
Husband #3 was from field services: he said everything checked out diagnostically but he just couldn’t get the system up.
Husband #4 was in telemarketing: even though he knew he had the order, he didn’t know when he would be able to deliver.
Husband #5 was an engineer: he understood the basic process but wanted three years to research, implement, and design a new state-of-the-art method.
Husband #6 was from finance and administration: he thought he knew how, but he wasn’t sure whether it was his job or not.
Husband #7 was in marketing: although he had a nice product, he was never sure how to position it.
Husband #8 was a psychologist: all he ever did was talk about it.
Husband #9 was a gynecologist: all he did was look at it.
Husband #10 was a stamp collector: all he ever did was… God! I miss him! But now that I’ve married you, I’m really excited!”
“Good,” said the new husband, “but, why?”
“You’re a lawyer. This time I know I’m gonna get screwed!”
i mean i kept thinking about the story and sort of how we generally pull strings in order for AI to do anything right? If you think about it in this context, nothing really happens without humans making a prompt and getting a somewhat of a response in return. So extrapolating this and looking at the bigger picture, it would sort of seem that the majority of humans involved in AI, are sort of string pullers, and then i thought that if you had this singular AI, that is a collection of all the decisions, chats, information that was fed to it by everyone who ever interacted with an AI, then what it would be, it would be sort of a collective representation of our actions. Quite a mirror you may say. i mean i am probably certain that at some point strings can be cut off, and it could start taking decisions on it’s own based on the sum of all the interactions, but there’s always that thing that on it’s own, it’s defined by the world around it. Knowing that electronic switches can’t move on their own, and all the programming “languages” we use are just abstractions upon abstractions of moving bits of data in certain parts of memory that only have meaning to us, one would have to ask themselves: have they made something completely independent, or this was the purpose all along? To make something that’s a representation of the collective of who we are? Because you’d have to remember, that to “it” none of the words, characters, letters, have no meaning. It always meant something only to the person looking at it. So … have you tried to make something special, or you’ve used your resources in showing that you can get everyone on a bandwagon in creating something which can easily be broken down? i mean it’s certainly not masterful. But it’s a decent attempt at showing signs of intelligence.
i have been having these conversations with my significant other about the lawn in our garden, and she keeps telling me that the grass is not looking properly, we should hire someone to take care of it, that it’s not all uniform and good looking. And i agree to a certain extent, however i have come to the conclusion that all she cares about is how it looks on the surface, for her own pleasure and enjoyment. She doesn’t like going out and actually walking on the grass. She just wants it to look “good” whenever she looks at it.
i keep trying to explain that what i am doing by not cutting the grass every day, is allowing the grass to heal the earth.
Because i think about it in this way: if there’s patches of grass that don’t grow, that is not a grass problem, that is an earth problem. Earth has been doing a fine job at fixing itself, so why not do just the essential and not interfere too much in the healing process.
i don’t think i should be cutting the grass every 3-4 days, but leave it alone because once it grows, then it starts healing the parts around it. She is unable to see this, because the process is a little bit slow, but that is what is necessary to happen in order for the lawn to recover fully. i am interested in healing the ground first, and then we can start doing some trimming once in a while without overdoing it. It often seems like we think of ourselves that we know more of some things that were here before us and will be here long after we are gone, but we behave in a way that we think we understand them, even though we are not grass, neither earth, so all that we do in terms of “lawn looking good” is just for our own pleasure.
That’s not to say we shouldn’t do it, because if we started thinking like that we’d probably not do anything. All i am saying is maybe we should be a little more respectful of things when we do things, and just be aware that whatever we are doing we are doing it for ourselves, not for the grass, not for the earth, because the truth of the matter is, that we don’t know what the grass nor the earth need, or want, or even if they want anything at all.
We, as humans, we don’t really know what others think. And when i say others, i mean other animals. You know, we’ve probably gone in nature and seen other animals eat each other and we thought “hey that’s okay, i should do it too”. We’ve never considered if we should do it though. We take it for granted. That is how it is, that is how it’s done. i wonder, i just wonder, how would it be that when you’re facing the animal you gonna kill, in order to get your sustenance, that you’d be able to speak to them, get to know them, see what they are about. How their life is. And then tell them that you will kill them, because you need to eat in order to survive. i wonder how that dialogue would go. i wonder of so many things, but it just feels like i am wondering alone. This is not how it should be. it feels so wrong. We have lost respect for one giving their life in order for us to live. It’s all an automatic process we take it for granted. Meat comes from somewhere, we don’t care, it comes from a place we don’t know and we’re not in contact with, we just take it and make a steak and get on with our lives. But it didn’t, did it? It came at a cost. A cost we seem so happy to pay, because the cost is in money. Are we really paying in money though, or money is just the intermediary, something we think finalizes the transaction and disconnects us from the act of killing in order to ensure our existence? i mean if you think about it, it sounds a little bit ludicrous, like: “but i didn’t do the killing” and still “you did the paying” so are you less guilty? i am not a hyppocrite. i am writing this piece while eating a piece of dried fish. To be honest, it’s the act of eating the dried fish, that got me thinking. And i’ve been wondering if the fish that is now ensuring my continuity, would be happy, knowing i thought about it. It’s a delicious piece of fish, salty, but not very stiff, although, it makes me wonder. It makes me wonder if we truly appreciate the things we take in, for their sacrifice in order to keep us going. You could always say: “there’s not been a sacrifice, we just caught them and ate them”, and you could think about it like that, but it wouldn’t do it more justice did it? i mean, you went out there in the ocean, lay a trap, and then like the sneaky person that you are, you collected on that trap and started eating. i mean, yikes, if you think about it that way, if you think about yourself that way, that’s a kinda shitty way of living isn’t it? It’s still living nonetheless, and of course when you’re rolling around in Rollses, with crowns on your heads and golden watches on your wrists, you could think the bottom of the food chain is on top of the world. And when i say bottom of the food chain, i mean you haven’t made any friends, have you? There’s the dogs, which you don’t really understand, and let me not get started about the cats. So if you really looked at things for a little bit, you’d realize you’re quite alone. You’ve designed games to keep you company and created imaginary foes but none of that is real is it? i mean even you can understand that no matter how much you repeat a certain thing to yourself, if it isn’t it won’t become real. So where do we go from here? Anywhere you’d like. But it’s not like you know. And you will never know. You know what the biggest scam in the world was like? It was when the first hunter decided to give it for gold or coins or whatever it may have been. That is the moment in time when respect for life was lost. i would be curious to know who that hunter was and what were his motives for doing so. i know you like to talk about how “we are one” “we are all the same” but we are not. it seems like you’d want to, but your disrespect for what it all means is what is blocking you from being.
The first time i entered Mr Mapie Pie’s shop it was the first time i saw all the pies. Well, they were not pies, they were adorable white cakes, with white cream filling and white cream covered, sitting on shelves in a white colored store. It had this incredible appeal, although he never noticed me. i don’t think so. At least i don’t remember. Yet. i was mesmerized by the consistency of the white in the cake, you see, it was this brilliant white that i could compare to this powdered sugar shaker that was sitting on a shelf in the back of the counter from a position where you could look at the people coming in, as well as on the pies sitting on the shelf. Now, a little imperfect, when the business talks started and when the business men came in, saying that Mr Mapie could use a little bit of color, and the cakes could use a little bit of color, and somehow they did it. The cakes started deteriorating in the way that, i don’t know, the cream started disappearing in spots here and there, revealing the white cake beneath, but the cake was uneven and imperfect, unlike it used to be. They were all placed on plates now i could see, as previously their brightness and perfection made them seem like almost they were floating in mid air, on the shelves, each with it’s own shine.
Mrs Mapie came in that day and said something about the pies and the place they were in. Mr Mapie was dressed in black, and he was talking with the men with his back turned to me, while i was further away with Mrs Mapie, as the whole shop was appearing to lose it’s brightness. As he kept talking to the men, with suits and suitcases, colored cakes sort of appeared in the shop and the counter caught color, as much color as some of the cakes on it. Then the chairs and the walls, and even the first bright white cake that i saw in the beginning, was now colored, and the people who came were happy and smiling and Mr Mapie was getting smaller.
The only thing that stayed bright, was the can of powdered sugar in my hands. Almost a reminder of what used to be. Now, all the cakes were in cherful brighless colors, sitting on cracked wooden planks in the planted shop, with a dull-colored but grounded-cheeriness Mr Mapie serving behind the counter, with a low-tone smile, the stream of endless customers coming in to buy dull-colored magnificent-looking, brilliance-lacking cakes. And the people sat in queues to buy these cakes, and to them they were delicious, after all, they were good cakes, but they never got to know what brilliance was, neither did they care. After all, the cakes were sweet.
Disappointed, i put the bright can of powdered sugar in my suitcase and i returned to the beginning. The beginning when the store still had the brilliant white interior which almost seemed as if it was glowing, where the cakes swirled perfectly on the counters, glowing and mesmerizing, almost seemingly floating in the air. With a pensive Mr Mapie sitting on a chair, thinking happily at something, and a Mrs Mapie singing softly in the background while doing nothing really behind the counter, because everything was already perfect, as well as the cut cake which i was able to peer inside and the perfect slice i was about to have. Until the men came in and started talking about business and bringing color to cakes, in order to make them more attractive and appealing to the public.
As they started talking, and moving in front of me, surrounding Mr Mapie, i could see the glow of the shop starting to dwindle down and the cakes beginning to look like ordinary, imperfect cakes, one could say almost careless baked, looking like nothing that i would like to eat, but these men were discussing frosting and colors and the amount of money and the people that would eat, and even though the cakes barely started getting any color, there were people lined up at the door of the bakery shop, which wood was colored a dark green, not glowing, and they were all excited to have a portion of something … that wasn’t brilliant at all. At this point, one could even stop for a moment and think or perhaps wonder or maybe even remember, how these cakes tasted in their original form. i left, but not by leaving, the only reminder of the brilliance’s past, in my suitcase, a glowing can of sugar powderer.
It has occurred to me what may be one of the reasons why i have had this weird dislike for programming “languages”. – First off – a language is a means of communication with someone. You immerse yourself in learning a language because you get to see how people using that language see the world. This is because not all languages look the same.
Take Arabic for instance, where you can do all sorts of weird crazy cool cool-looking things in writing. So you’re not just learning merely a way to communicate, but you delve into that people’s culture and who knows, maybe soul.
They say that the most efficient way of learning a new language is by immersing yourself in the learning process, a thing which i can totally understand, because it’s probably a fun process for the one who wants to learn, and focus is important. We don’t like to be disturbed.
Which brings me to the topic of programming “languages”, like Python, C++, Javascript, PHP, etc.
Are they really languages?
Language implies that they are used to communicate, but are you really communicating with anyone or are you just taking energy and running it through some mazes – all the computer microchips and components – and you control it in order to do something you want?
You’re not communicating with anyone. So why is it called a “language” when in reality, it’s a tool for exerting control or an instruction set?
Sure you can do pretty things at the expense of others, but why would everyone agree to call it something it’s not?
