Posted on 12/31/2023 6:36:36 AM PST by MtnClimber
It was a year of reckoning, a year in which humanity finally began to understand that it faces an existential threat, a threat unlike any we have ever faced before, a threat that will wreak havoc on our fragile planet if we fail to stop it — and it may already be too late.
We are referring, of course, to pickleball.
Nobody knows where it started. Some scientists believe it escaped from a laboratory in China. But whatever its origin, it has been spreading like rancid mayonnaise ever since, to the point where pickleball courts now cover 43 percent of the continental US land mass, subjecting millions of Americans to the inescapable, annoying POP of the plastic ball and the even more annoying sound of boomers in knee braces relentlessly telling you how much fun it is and demanding that you try it.
Unfortunately, pickleball wasn’t the only existential threat to emerge in 2023. There was also artificial intelligence, or AI. What is AI? To put it in simple layperson terms, it is a computer thing that laypersons cannot possibly understand. (Other examples are “bitcoin” and “algorithm.”)
AI does provide some unambiguous benefits to humanity. It enables college students to produce grammatically correct essays about books they have not personally read. But according to some experts — and if we can’t believe some experts, who can we believe? — there is a possibility that AI will wipe out all human life. This is what computer professionals call a “bug.”
Will AI, in fact, kill us all? Why would it want to? To answer that question, we took the unusual step (for us) of doing some actual research. We asked an AI program called ChatGPT to “briefly summarize the benefits of wiping out all human life.” This is the response...
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
In 2023 we had Joe and his overloaded diaper. We need a change more than he needs a change.
mark
[[Nobody knows where it started. Some scientists believe it escaped from a laboratory in China))
Oh my word that is funny!
I really need something that’s just funny right now and you posted this at the exact right time. Thank you!
Dave makes more sense than 90 percent of the “real” journalists out there.
soon we will not be able to engage in any kind of economic transaction, including with armed robbers, ATMs, or vending machines, without being asked if we wish to leave a tip.
My faves:
Unfortunately, the untold glories of playing pickleball
wasn’t the only existential threat to emerge in 2023.
There was also artificial intelligence, or AI, a computer
thing that laypersons cannot possibly understand.
(Other examples of the latter are “bitcoin” and “algorithm.”)
BTTT
...the big story in Washington is the Federal Debt Crisis, which is an extremely complex financial problem that ordinary civilian taxpayers such as yourself are too stupid to understand. We will simplify it for you by comparing the federal government to a typical American family of four, whom we will call the Johnsons.
Let’s say that the Johnson parents — we’ll call them Bill and Jane — have a combined annual income of $73,500. Now let’s say that Bill and Jane have a habit of spending more money than they earn, and as a result they have, over the years, run up a total debt of $31 trillion. To continue living far above their means, Bill and Jane have no choice but to borrow more money. But they’re having a big dramatic fight about how MUCH more. It’s a crisis!
And there’s this...”Also there will come a day when you cannot flush your toilet without “two-factor authentication.”
Marking.
Dave Barry’s writing reminds me a lot of Groucho Marx. If you read any of his books, you’ll see hints of the future Dave Barry. Same type of wit and unexpected twists.
I must be losing it. I thought Dave Barry died a few years ago.
because of a glitch in the software, Teslas placed in autopilot mode will sometimes spontaneously, without warning, attempt to mate with non-electric vehicles.
“We think this is where hybrids come from,” states an NHTSA official.
I always thought the writing styles of Barry and P J. O’Rourke, who did pass away, were comparable.
Perhaps that’s who you were thinking of.
After reading it, it’s obvious we’ve gotta get rid of that Dottie Weisenflanker.
Could be. I really liked both of them.
David Barry is hilarious.
But Augusto Pinochet was a much better human being.
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