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 |   Tales from real life |
| Well, if they're not true, they oughta be! |
Mount St. Helens erupted in May and Gene was born in September. My wife and I wondered if the volcano affected his development in the womb or was merely an omen of things to come. Either way, Gene was exciting, exasperating, infuriating, and unique. He was not a slave to convention. Gene always did things his way, regardless of consequence. As a teen, he did the Seattle to Portland bicycle race in a single day - on a mountain bike. And wherever he went in life, he went fast. He loved running, riding motorcycles and driving sports cars. He lived life at a fast pace and left us too soon.  Shortly after Gene started kindergarten, his teacher brought a box of Halloween decorations into the classroom and asked if anyone could guess what was inside. Gene immediately piped up with “A skeleton!” “How did you know that?” Ms. Diaz asked in surprise. “Because it says so on the box,” Gene shrugged. His teacher was surprised, but Deb and I weren’t. Gene wasn’t satisfied with waiting for us to read to him. He wanted to do it himself, and he wanted to do it now. I was proud and pleased that he was so eager to learn. He quickly caught on to the basic idea of using letters to represent the sounds that make up the words. Who knew that grade-school phonics would be so useful to me as a parent? The only down side was that Gene no longer needed to sit on my lap and have me read Dr. Seuss. No more Hop on Pop and no more Fox in Socks. He always read far above grade level, and he especially liked science fiction. I was proud of him, but I missed that time together. I bought a ColecoVision game console when the kids were little. We spent many hours together playing Frogger, Q*bert, Donkey Kong Jr, and Burgertime. Gene loved the cartoony images and the electronic bleeps and boops. He later bought his own gaming consoles and continued to enjoy video games all his life. Gene would always race through the levels as quickly as possible in order to ‘beat’ the game. I couldn’t keep up with him, so I’d carefully rack up the maximum points instead. He’d get impatient waiting for his turn and would be indignant if I got a higher score even though he was three levels ahead of me. In third grade Gene tested well enough to qualify for the Quest program. He enjoyed the more challenging curriculum and the more casual classroom atmosphere. Unfortunately, there was no Quest program in Jr. High and he began to have problems with what he saw as unnecessary homework demands. Gene could ace the tests without ever handing in a single homework assignment and that only irritated his teachers. In High School, his issues with homework got worse. He often skipped school, but still aced his tests. We had many meetings with the principal. The only solution she ever offered was to have him change schools. And she forced him to repeat classes even though he clearly demonstrated proficiency with the material. The one lesson that Gene learned was that school was just busy work and a waste of his time. As parents, we didn’t know what to do. I tried to get him to ‘go along to get along’, but Gene was the rebel without a clue. We tried punishments, we tried rewards, we took him to church, but Gene was too stubborn to give in. He didn’t get a driver’s license until he turned eighteen, because we made it conditional on getting his grades up. We went to family counseling and he sat in stone-faced silence. We got all kinds of well-meant advice on how to fix him, but it seemed the only thing we did right as parents was to not give up on him. I did Track and Cross-country in high school and so did Gene. But where I was mediocre, Gene was actually good. And it was the main thing that kept him in school. He ran a competitive time in the 800 meters, but he really liked cross-country and continued to be an avid runner all his life. Gene worked his way up to longer distances and competed in the Boston marathon in 2007. He averaged about one marathon a year and ran in dozens of shorter races as well. He once said that he planned to run a marathon in all 50 states. He logged Hawaii and Puerto Rico in his total, and was up to 14 after completing a race in South Dakota last year. He and his wife Mary traveled to Tromsø, Norway in 2018 for the Midnight Sun marathon. The race actually does take place in the midnight sun because it’s held on the summer solstice and the course crosses over the Arctic circle. I was able to add a bit of human interest by sharing that his great-great-grandmother was a Norwegian immigrant from Drammen. We weren’t surprised when Gene left high school without a diploma. He drifted aimlessly for several years, accumulated dozens of speeding tickets, and flirted with more serious trouble. He held a series of retail jobs, worked as a security guard, and even went door-to-door selling vacuum cleaners. Nothing he tried seemed to fit. In 2001 he ran out of second chances and spent his Christmas in jail. That was a low point for the entire family. Gene’s turn-around began when Debbie confided in her friend Tracy and she put Gene in touch with her brother, Terry. He gave Gene a third chance and hired him as a laborer at Grayhawk construction. Demolition seemed like a perfect fit – he could get paid to smash things up. It wasn’t smooth sailing at first, but Terry had patience with Gene, and he became a valued employee at Grayhawk for more than fifteen years. It turns out that demolition actually goes more smoothly if you don’t make a big mess. Gene showed a talent for getting his demo jobs done quickly and with less effort. That made his boss happy, and Gene felt like he was beating the system when he could work six hours and still get paid for eight. Terry told him that he needed a HS diploma to be hired, so Gene got his GED in 2002 at Bellevue Community College. They sent a letter with the results, stating that he had the highest score for the current year. They urged him to enroll in their college program and eventually, he did. Gene completed his associate degree in 2013. He then transferred to the University of Washington and received his bachelor’s degree in civil engineering in 2016. In addition to science fiction, Gene and I always shared an interest in cars and motorcycles. His first ride as a toddler was on my Yamaha XV920. He invited me out for my birthday a few years ago. We went to the LeMay car museum in Tacoma and spent half a day wandering the exhibits and talking. Gene drove and bought the tickets as a gift to me. I have arthritic knees and I had to stop from time to rest on a bench. It may have been the first time that Gene slowed to my pace and didn’t get impatient. It was one of the best days we ever spent together. Afterward, we grabbed a burger and Gene paid again. I understood that he was showing me that he’d become an adult, so I just thanked him and didn’t spoil it by trying to split the check. I don’t know if Gene realized how proud I was of the way he turned his life around. We sometimes had a prickly relationship and weren’t as close as I would have liked. That’s on both of us. I was too proud to push myself into his life and I felt that he didn’t appreciate mine. Both of us had strong opinions that we felt bound to defend. In many ways, Gene was too much like me. He didn’t socialize much and it wasn’t easy for him to make a real connection with other people. His childhood friend Kaye meant a lot to him, and he was always close to his friend Chris, but he didn’t have a wide circle of support. That was one reason why Gene’s wedding was one of the best days of my life. It was the happiest I’d ever seen him. Mary was good for him and I’ll always be glad that they got together. Gene and Mary traveled the world together, visiting several European countries and doing a grand tour of Australia. There’s a phrase, ‘dark night of the soul’, that I ponder sometimes. It comes from a poem by St John of the Cross. The poem isn’t really about depression, but that’s what the term ‘dark night’ means to me. Many of us experience that dark night. Some push through on their own, some get help, and some don’t make it out the other side. I was on anti-anxiety meds for a couple of years, but I didn’t share that with Gene. I understand why he didn’t want to share his problems with us, but I desperately wish that he had. And maybe if I’d been more open about my own experience with depression, it would have helped him to cope. Everyone keeps asking if there’s anything they can do. The answer is yes and no. It’s too late to say or do the things that might have made a difference for Gene. All we can do is move forward and try to make a difference for each other. So, in lieu of flowers, please be open with your own problems, ask for help when needed, and be generous with your time for friends and family. Gene was my son. I hope he knew how much I loved him.  Longing Would that grasp could equal reach and net a heav’nly spark, wheeling round celestial poles like dew dropped in the dark. Wistful gaze with hungry mind, what wonders do await? Yearning for the vast unknown infinity of space. Terrence G. Fisher, 2023 my soul is bereft of peace; I have forgotten what happiness is; so I say, “Gone is my glory, and all that I had hoped for from the Lord.” The thought of my affliction and my homelessness is wormwood and gall! My soul continually thinks of it and is bowed down within me. But this I call to mind, and therefore, I have hope: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in him.” Lamentations 3:17-24 |
In 2008, Barack Obama gave a victory speech with the theme "Yes. we can!" Sure, it was full of political platitudes, but it gave me hope that America might be ready for a positive change. The previous administration had taken the country to a dark place. They waged an undeclared Mideast war mainly for the benefit of the defense industry. Billions of dollars wasted on tit-for-tat vengeance with millions of civilian casualties. I thought the shame of this new genocide might shock Americans into doing better and maybe even being better. Instead, it soon became apparent that there are no quick and easy solutions. The Obama administration accomplished many good things but, predictably, fell short of his aspirations. Helping others takes long-term commitment and it's often a thankless task with little reward. Self-sacrifice is difficult. It takes hard work. And it really puts a crimp in the consumer lifestyle. Self-awareness is the first step toward self-improvement, but it's painful to confront our own faults. Far easier to turn a blind eye to past failures and pretend that everything is great, has always been great. That our only real problem is that we don't spend enough time celebrating our own greatness and our great leaders. In 2024 we have over 70 million voters who are rallying to the angry cry of "No, you can't!" No, you can't trust the government! No, you can't make your own medical decisions! No, you can't marry your preferred spouse! No, you can't stop school shootings! No, you can't choose your own gender! No, you can't stand up to dictators! No, you can't love your neighbor! No, you can't read books! No, you can't choose your own leaders. No, you can't learn about racism! No, you can't choose your own lifestyle. No, you can't be woke! No, you can't be better! It is truly disappointing to see the sins of the fathers visited upon the current generation. But the only way to break the cycle of shame is to make a change in ourselves. We can only strive to improve the present to create a good example for the future. We can't give up on the effort just because it isn't quick and easy. And it all starts with being woke. Even the biggest and slickest lies can't substitute for compassion, mercy, and justice. We can do better. We can acknowledge past failings and still take pride in incremental improvement. We can tell the truth, cast off our shackles, and be free of the sins of our fathers. Yes, we can! |
Full disclosure: I would like to see failed insurrectionist Donald Trump disqualified from holding office in order to protect democracy and the rule of law. This ban should include any office, be it local, national or global. I would also like to see him barred from doing business in the US or abroad to protect his weak-minded and gullible base from his predatory fundraising. And I would like to see him excommunicated from any and all faith traditions as an amoral, sacrilegious, and unchristian infidel. As far as I'm concerned, he doesn't even qualify as human. Donald Trump's lack of character should be enough to disqualify him from the ballot, but there's no legal requirement to be a good person in order to run for office. So, the issue I want to explore today is the natural-born citizen clause in the US constitution. Hospital records show that on June 14th, 1946, Mrs. Mary Anne Trump delivered a baby and a turd. Unfortunately, the baby died. Mrs. Trump was inconsolable. So much so that she sent the turd off to military school, where it left a bad odor before moving on to university. No one knows how or even if, the turd obtained a business degree. All academic records have been sealed to contain the stench. Amazingly, the turd grew and prospered, becoming a huge steaming pile. And it was always presented on a fine silver platter so that none would dare to call it crap. Now you can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig. And you can serve a turd on a silver platter, but it's still a turd. The real point, however, is that a turd is not a natural-born person. And a turd, no matter how it's presented, is not qualified to be on the ballot in a presidential election. |
| I wrote this song parody almost five years ago. I had no idea that the orange oaf would reveal his man crush on Al Capone and make it even funnier today. The Ballad of Donny and Al (to the tune of The ballad of John and Yoko by The Beatles) Betting on casinos in Jersey, Atlantic City cash seemed so sweet. I kicked up a fuss when my dealers went bust. A stock scam put me back on my feet. Al, you know it ain’t easy, you know how G-men can be. The way things are going, they might incarcerate me. Working with the mob in construction, don't worry pal, the check's in the mail. Sell steaks on the side. or cheap Chinese ties, and Trump U grades the students pay/fail. Al, you know it ain’t easy, you know how G-men can be. The way things are going, they might incarcerate me. Moving into big time corruption, expanding internationally. Shady real estate deals are a license to steal, dirty rubles getting laundered up clean. Al, you know it ain’t easy, you know how G-men can be. The way things are going, they might incarcerate me. Gerrymandered voter suppression, they say that’s how elections are done. We got caught colludin’ with Vladimir Putin, but baby, it don’t matter, we won! Al, you know it ain’t easy, you know how G-men can be. The way things are going, they might incarcerate me. Lying to the people comes easy, self-dealing’s just a personal loan. Emoluments too are just a president’s due; but tax evasion brought down Capone. Al, you know it ain’t easy, you know how G-men can be. The way things are going, they might incarcerate me. Terrence G. Fisher 2019 Author's Note ▼ |
A More Plausible Version “Okay, you won this round, but I still think I’m on the right track,” Satan grumbled. “Heaping personal misfortune on Job may not have been effective but offering power to Hitler almost worked. And I did get his ‘good Germans’ to exterminate millions of your chosen people. Next time, I’ll finish the job.” “Next time? Why must this vain struggle go on? Will you not repent and turn back to Me? Is there to be no end to the misery that you inflict on My creation?” “You’ll see, this humanity you love so much will ultimately betray you. They’re shallow, greedy, and selfish. They love power and celebrity more than they love God. In fact. I’ll bet that I can corrupt the very people who defeated Hitler. Your so-called greatest generation will beget the Antichrist who takes them down. All I need is a man of privilege who gains power without earning it. An amoral man who can lie, cheat, and steal without conscience or compassion. A preening buffoon who isn’t taken seriously until it’s too late. And then, absolute power will corrupt absolutely. He’ll set himself up as an object of worship and the name of God will be utterly forgotten!” “You know that this is pointless, that it only causes needless suffering and pain. Pain for you as well as for them. Only ask forgiveness and it shall be given to you as it is to all.” “No, I won’t do that. I know they’ll betray you again, I'm sure of it. They ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge and brought suffering on themselves. They worshipped a golden calf, why not an orange moron? And anyway, we’re playing by your rules. We all have free will, so you have to let me tempt them.” “Very well, we’ll have another round.” And so, on June 14th, 1946, God covered Satan's bet and created Donald J. Trump to be his tool. |
Loathsome Loser (to the tune of Lonesome Loser by the Little River Band) Have you heard about the loathsome loser? Beaten by the Biden courts every time Have you heard about the loathsome loser? He's a loser but he still keeps on lyin' Sit down, take a look at yourself, Gotta ask 'just maybe it's me?' Garland's Feds are gonna lock you inside You have to face up, you can't run and hide. Have you heard about the loathsome loser? Beaten by the Biden courts every time Have you heard about the loathsome loser? He's a loser but he still keeps on lyin' "Led insurrection", least that's what they say He lost the election but then still tried to stay Keeps on searching though there's no votes to find Staked his soul and lost, now he has to pay the cost. Have you heard about the loathsome loser? Beaten by the Biden courts every time Have you heard about the loathsome loser? He's a loser but he still keeps on lyin' Hear the original: https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/relatedvideo?q=lonesome+loser+little+river... |
Last month I posted some thoughts about the calendar: "Solstice Reflections"  .I described a perpetual calendar with 13 months of 28 days and a Solstice Day holiday to make a full 365-day year. Every fourth year would have a second Solstice Day holiday to account for our current leap year. The primary objection to such a calendar comes from the religious communities who are committed to a seven-day cycle of the Sabbath. Last week a friend sent a link to a post about early efforts to adopt such a calendar: https://www.ranker.com/list/strange-history-international-fixed-calendar/stephan... What caught my eye was a comment to the effect that weeks have meaning, but months are wholly arbitrary. That set me to thinking outside the box again. Why not make a calendar with 52 weeks and no months at all? We could coordinate the new year with the winter solstice* and simply count up 52 weeks to the next New Year's Eve. Of course, we'd still have to account for an 'extra' quarter day every year to keep our new calendar in sync with the solar year. But instead of a leap day every four years, we could add a leap week every 28 years. Most people would see only two or three leap weeks in a lifetime. This would maintain the seven-day cycle of the Sabbath and eliminate any serious objection to calendar reform. You may wonder about being almost a week out of sync with the solar calendar after 27 years. Is that a problem? Well, if we intentionally start day one of the new calendar three and a half days after the winter solstice, then we'd fall back into sync fourteen years later. And we'd be 3 and a half days ahead of the winter solstice when leap week begins. So, our new calendar would never be more than three and a half days out of sync with the solar year. That seems close enough for planting and harvesting crops. Global warming has already impacted growing seasons by several days in many regions of the world. Of course, using the winter solstice is not required. It's convenient, measurable, and near January 1st, but we could choose differently. Depending on your local culture, New Year's Day is observed in February, March, September, or October. Another possibility is to start the new year with the spring equinox when the green of new life appears. Personally, I could support using either the turn of the solar year at the winter solstice or the return of new growth at the spring equinox. Using weeks would seem weird at first, but many cultures around the world use different calendars. They have no difficulty coping and we'd adjust more easily than you might think. Would we miss our months that have been in use for thousands of years? Of course, we would. But instead of months, we could name the weeks. Wouldn't it be fun to have 53 named weeks instead of a paltry 12 months? *Note: This is written from the viewpoint of the northern hemisphere. A significant number of people experience the seasons in reverse of my cultural bias. |
The prospect of snow brings back childhood memories from when my dad delivered the mail on our rural route. He took the 'neither rain nor snow' slogan seriously and almost never missed a day in his 20-year career. One winter morning, we woke to 4-foot drifts and no school bus. Dad said no problem, we could just ride into town with him. We tried to get out of it, but Mom said go. So, we bundled up to brave the icy trek to school instead of relaxing with comics and hot cocoa. A mile of unplowed, uphill gravel road separated us from the highway. Some stretches were swept bare by the frigid wind, but there were also some deep drifts. Dad got up to ramming speed and busted through a couple of the smaller drifts, but he was stymied by a 4-footer about a quarter mile short of the pavement. There was far too much snow to shovel a path through, so he had to turn back. But that didn't mean giving up. It took a bit of 'rocking' the car back and forth to get loose, but dad was up to the task. You might wonder why he didn't chain up. Well, a man who knows how to drive in the snow doesn't need chains! The roads in the area are laid out in a grid along section lines, so dad tried again a mile further west. That road is more level, except for one steep hill. Dad took a run at it, but it was too slick, and the car slid sideways against the snowbank piled up at the edge of the road. This time we were really stuck. Or were we? Dad told us kids to get out and push, but sideways, not forward. We all pushed on the front fender of the car to spin it around. The road was pure ice, dad wiggled the steering wheel, and the front tires slowly slid in a 180-degree arc. We tried another mile west and dad finally found an open roadway that led us to plowed pavement. From there it was a relatively easy trip to school and on to the post office. We found that school was canceled and the kids from town had already been sent home. It was too late to do us any good, however, we had to wait for dad to come back in the afternoon. A few other kids were in a similar predicament, so we all had a day-long study hall in the Junior High building. A dozen bored students of various ages and one annoyed teacher who had to babysit made for a long day. At least the trip home was downhill. |
My recent post Unsocial Media described how I used an old-fashioned rotary phone to connect an ASR-33 teletype machine to our college mainframe computer. The teletype served as a primitive terminal for real-time interaction with the mainframe. At the time, it was considered quite an improvement over the punch card. Punch card programs had to be submitted to a technician who ran the deck of cards through a card reader and then returned the printed output to the user. It took time to run any deck, and there was usually a queue. It wasn't unusual to wait overnight to see the results of a programming change. The teletype, however, sent commands directly to the computer and printed the results immediately. Few of us realized it back then, but just placing a call with a rotary phone was a rudimentary form of digital programming. When you picked up a handset, that ubiquitous dial tone was the phone switch ‘computer’ saying ‘I’m listening’ (and it was far more useful than a radio-show psychiatrist). But the phone computer couldn’t understand analog human speech, so the dialing mechanism had to generate a series of electrical pulses similar to the ones and zeros that underlie all computer apps and programs. Those pulses were counted by mechanical relays at the phone company offices to direct your call to the desired person. I toured the phone company in Missoula, Montana in the early 1970s. Even that relatively small town had a warehouse size building with racks and racks of ten-position relays that clattered noisily as they switched calls from line to line. The mechanism inside a rotary phone includes a spring, a speed regulator, and an electrical switch. Oddly enough, nothing really happens when you rotate the dial to a specific number. All you’ve done at that point is wind up the spring. The action occurs when you let go and the dial rotates back to the start position. An electrical circuit opens and closes as the dial moves to create pulses on the phone line. If you select 7 with your finger, then seven pulses are sent down the line. Timing is critical to the operation of the telephone switching network, so the speed regulator is used to eliminate the human factor. And when the first pulse is received, a timer starts that defines the period for counting the complete number. If seven pulses are counted during the timer window, then the phone computer knows the first digit is 7. And you can’t wind the spring for the second number fast enough to interfere with the first number. Dialing a sequence of numbers was equivalent to programming a computer to connect you to your desired party. One-finger programming was pretty simple, but dialing seven digits could connect you to any one of ten million local telephones. Ten digits could reach out to ten billion lines throughout North America. If a single pulse was received as the first digit, that meant it was a long-distance call and the next three digits would be interpreted as the area code rather than the local prefix. For example, if my dad dialed 1-206, then the relays at his local phone company would mechanically switch positions to connect his line to a long-distance line for Washington state. Three more digits, the prefix, would be counted by a phone computer in Washington to move more relays and connect him to the desired local phone office. And then the local phone computer would count the last four digits to make the final connection to the phone in my house. And only after all of that digital programming was completed could the analog voice signal travel over a continuous wire from his mouth to my ear. “Hello?” |
Approximately a lifetime ago, my uncle Willie gave me a simple four-function pocket calculator with an LED display. It was my personal introduction to the space age, just four years after the first moon landing. My current smart phone is about the same physical size as that pocket calculator but has more computing power than the room-size mainframe computer that I used at college in the late 1970s. I know now that it was as crude as using an abacus, but I felt then as though I were joining the crew of the starship Enterprise. I won't even try to describe the stone-age programs that we wrote for that Xerox Sigma 7, but I have to say a few words about the ASR-33 teletype machine that freshmen used to communicate with it (green-screen CRT terminals were reserved for upperclassmen). The teletype was a hybrid of the mechanical typewriter and the Morse code telegraph system. Pushing a clunky mechanical key at one teletype would cause a printed letter to appear on the paper in another teletype, or on multiple teletype machines located in newsrooms across the world. That was the original newsfeed, and the chattering sound of the teletype machine accompanied television news programs for many decades. Imagine that chattering sound multiplied by forty. That was the environment in the freshman computing lab. Forty students hammering away at crude keyboards to input data into the mainframe and then reading the output on a continuous roll of paper as it fed through the teletype machine. It wasn't really great for concentration and the amount of wasted paper that merely showed error messages was almost scandalous. The lowly telephone, invented almost 100 years earlier, provided our link to the space-age technology of Siggy-7 just like it provided the link between newsrooms. Each computer programming session was initiated by dialing into the mainframe and then placing the telephone handset into the rubber cups of an acoustic modem. Remember the cute little beeps and boops that R2D2 used to communicate with C3PO? Well, the teletype machine quite literally talked to the mainframe over a phone line in a similar fashion. Except that the modem tones weren't cute at all. The lunatic squealing and chirping of those modems still haunts my dreams. Younger folks will be shocked to learn that telephones were once attached to the house. They had to be plugged into a phone jack in the wall to connect to the 'network'. The service was provided by a public utility just like water and electricity. And even though the technology was relatively simple, a human operator was available 24/7 to help a user confused by long-distance dialing. Those old rotary-dial telephones were big and heavy. They were sometimes cast in the role of 'blunt object' in a murder mystery (the only thing you can murder with a smartphone is a person's reputation). The only ‘mobile’ phone I saw as a child had a thirty-foot cord so it could be carried into the next room for privacy. If you were outdoors, or in your car? Then you were out of touch, perhaps for hours. The horror! Today, nearly everyone posts the excruciating minutiae of their daily lives on the world wide web for anyone to see. They willingly cede all right to privacy in the desperate hope that somebody, somewhere, will ‘like’ them. It wasn’t always so. An early form of social media was called the party line. It consisted of a single telephone circuit that served multiple homes. This was especially common in rural areas, where it was cost prohibitive to run dedicated phone lines to all of the widely separated houses. Each phone was assigned a unique ring code made up of short and long rings. The idea was that each household would answer only when they heard their own ring code. But it was more entertaining to pick up on any ring and catch up on the local gossip. Or pick up at random to see if someone was already on the line. You could listen in on your neighbor as she chatted with Aunt Minnie or hear about her medical issues as she made an appointment with the doctor. Of course, back then people thought it was rude to eavesdrop. There was considerable friction between those who were 'just curious' and those who felt violated by the snooping. Today, people are offended if you don’t pay attention to pictures and posts with intimate details. Modern apps are orders of magnitude more sophisticated than our ancient Basic programs, and today's ultra hi-res screens can show the most trivial images in beautiful detail. There are thousands of solitaire games and millions of clickbait posts to fill our leisure time without resorting to real-life social interaction. And endless newsfeed items allow for obsessive doomscrolling. But don't forget, even though today's smartphone is primarily used for updating social media, it can also make phone calls to real people. Just like the ASR-33 and Siggy-7, you can literally talk with another human being. Or is it an AI chatbot? What a difference a generation makes! Author's Note: ▼ |
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