Left to my own devices

A couple of things happened last month that I wanted to write about, but the holidays (along with a serious bout of depression) got in the way. The first was a case that went before the United States Supreme Court, where a Christian web site designer refused to make custom web sites for same-sex weddings. The second was  news of a restaurant in Richmond, Virginia that refused to honor the reservation of a conservative Christian organization that, among other things, opposes same-sex marriage and abortion rights.

I've been meaning to write about something, but life has been busy of late. So, a week later, I'm finally getting around to it. There was an article that caught my attention, about a guy who used AI -- specifically, ChatGPT (you can Google it, if you want to learn more) -- to write a children's book. He then used something called Midjourney to illustrate it. The person in question, Ammaar Reshi, "wrote" (quotations used purposefully) Alice and Sparkle  for a friend's daughter, and self-published it online via Amazon's digital bookstore. He also had a physical paperback version printed. I'm not sure what the intended recipient thought of the tome, but Reshi talked about his endeavor on Twitter, and the reaction there, and on Amazon, was apparently lackluster. Some criticized the writing, others criticized the use of AI-generated art, claiming it stole the work of actual artists.

I recently read an article that references a study done about love. Specifically, the study's co-authors quizzed their subjects about various scenarios where they were asked to guess how a majority of people would respond to those scenarios. At the end, the co-authors of the article narrowed everything down to four things that would likely make most people feel loved. Those four things are follows... When someone shows compassion toward them during difficult times When a child snuggles up to them When their pets are happy to see them When someone tells them "I love you" There's nothing terribly earth-shattering contained therein. No doubt most of us enjoy having someone say they love us (unless it's in a Fatal Attraction kind of way), and who isn't happy to be treated well, and have their pets glad to see them? So, yeah, these four things make sense, and nearly amount to a dog-bites-man story. Of course, this got me thinking. Something that crossed my mind w