New Shoes in the Rain

It's Monday, and you've read the title for today's comments correctly. I first want to offer some observations about ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence chatbot that may or may not be revolutionary in some way.  That all sounds fun and rather innocuous in most respects, but since its capabilities have been reported in a widespread manner, there are now instances of companies using it to write advertising copy and some universities are screening entrance application essays to determine if prospective students are or were utilizing the service to write the endless essays necessary to apply to the college of one's choice. There are many more uses, most legitimate, for such a service.  A tech oriented podcast that I listen to regularly has spoken of it repeatedly and even had it write the intro to a recent installment.  And it sounded pretty good! Not to be left out Microsoft has revamped its Bing search engine (remember that, since Windows users really didn't have a ch...

Happy Monday, friends.  If you have today off from work I hope you enjoy the day, and, if not, well, welcome to the club!  We had two of our local grandkids sleep over last night, since they were out of school, enjoying having them here. But that's not what's on my mind this morning. How many consecutive days has there been a report of some sort of mass shooting event somewhere in the United States?  As so often seems to happen, the Michigan State shooting incidents seem to have triggered some activity in workplaces and in family scenarios since that time. Conspicuously absent this time has been the cascade of "thoughts and prayers," mostly from right-leaning politicians who are in deep with the NRA and other conservative causes. And one of the more appalling aspects of what happened in Michigan is that some of the students at MSU had already been through a mass shooting event in their high school in Oxford, Michigan a couple of years ago, and one or more had also sur...