Kickass and Help from Phyllis

Photo by Bill Stokes By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, reports the keeper in a state of some distress as Phyllis takes on yet another project to go along with her many noteworthy artistic accomplishments. The keeper’s main concern, of course, is that the time Phyllis spends with her new paint and brushes will …
Read

Kickass Rides the Elevator

Attribution: Photo by Derrick Treadwell on Unsplash By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, joins the keeper and Phyllis in lamenting that among the annoying ups and downs foisted on a considerable portion of their “Independent Living” age group is the elevator.  Perhaps not as insidious as the so called “smart phone” that assumes a brain take-over for …
Read

The Pen in Hand Guide to the Movies: Review of “Kim’s Video”

Illustration by Michael DiMilo Digital Killed the Video Store: Review of Kim’s Video By Geoff Carter The documentary is one of the few cinematic genres that consistently defies expectations. It covers a huge range of content from the journalistic to the sublime, reconstructing history, muckraking corruption, exposing social ills, documenting human experience, or—as in the …
Read

Dialogues on Artificial Unintelligence: Surfing the Technology Spiral

Attribution: Photo by Possessed Photography on Unsplash Featuring the Fabulous Dadbots: Mark M., Dave S., Mark O., Dennis C., Paul C., and Geoff Carter Fellow pundits, You cannot call me any kind of expert on Artificial Intelligence (AI). But is that going to stop me from writing about it? Hell no! I just listened to an episode of …
Read

Kickass and Old Men with iPhones

Attribution: Japanexperterna.se, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, is supporting the keeper in his move to make it illegal for old men—and maybe some elderly women, to possess iPhones, after overwhelming anecdotal evidence shows that the phones do more harm than good in the shaky hands of those old …
Read

Kickass and Authentic Dumbness

Attribution: Dmitry Racer, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, will do his best to assist the keeper in sorting through artificial intelligence—AI, and authentic dumbness—AD, based on the following circumstances:             *The keeper turns the engine off and listens on the car radio while waiting for Phyllis at a medical …
Read

Kickass and Artificial Intelligence

Attribution: IITU Pictures from Geneva, Switzerland, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, reports that the keeper has more or less given up on deciding just where the much-ballyhooed threat of artificial intelligence fits into his and Phyllis’s “fight-or-flee” existence. It would seem to him that AI with its firm …
Read

Kickass and Tech Isolation

Attribution: Nantucket Historical Association Library, No restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, reports that the keeper, having had grandfathers who found it difficult if not impossible to make the transition from horses to automobiles, sympathizes with the old dudes in their painful discoveries that early cars did not respond to …
Read

The Human Touch

Illustration by Michael DiMilo By Geoff Carter Revelations about the latest advances in artificial intelligence is causing widespread concern across the entire spectrum of the creative community. For example, the AI-GPT writing generator, which mimics human writing well enough to fool some teachers and college instructors, is one of the bones of contention in the …
Read

Kickass Has Been Hacked

בר, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, passes along the information that the keeper has apparently been “hacked” on Facebook, and since he is not sure what that means, he is appealing to Phyllis to save him from whatever nastiness is to follow.  It is the keeper’s unsophisticated assumption that …
Read