sweasel.com

Yes, but British Peers don’t wear Polecat!
The rank of the peer is indicated by rows of “ermine tails (or the like)” on the miniver cape: 4 for a duke, 3½ for a marquess, 3 for an earl, 2½ for a viscount and 2 for a baron.[6] (Royal dukes have six rows of ermine, and additional rows on the collar and on the front edges of the garment.)

(And now for the bad Groucho joke)
Why you dress the place where you dock your ships in robes I’ll never understand.

So, AI has been the subject of the past 3 or 4 posts here at Weasel Central. Our hostess has an obvious excitement for what AI can do. I have a fearful skepticism that this technology will not end well with humanity. Mainly because I do not understand it and also because I see the potential for complete domination by programs who’s level of knowledge and thus cumulative intuition suddenly out thinks me by factors beyond anything comprehensible.

So here’s the story…..I had a snafu with an email address and needed to change it with three different websites in order to log in. Each company I called responded with an AI robot handling my call. Each company’s AI assistant spoke to me like a real person, inflection and syntax were exactly what a human would say, the only noticeable difference was a slightly longer pause between some answers than what you would expect with a human. I was able to solve each issue with each company but the last interaction freaked me out.

In troubleshooting the sign-on issue with this company, the AI voice (a very pleasant female) walked me through several steps. None worked… She apologized and said there was a solution but she needed to work harder. After a bit of a pause with no response, I offered that since I use a VPN, might that be the cause of the issue. She excitedly chimed in “Yes! I was just going to ask if you were using a VPN”
It was then I shit my pants.
I’m not sure I’m ready for this.

Happy Birthday month!

Mrs. AL and I will happily cut you some birthday slack. Her own birthday is tomorrow 5/3 (72nd) and my own 5/9 (77th). May we all enjoy our indolence contemporaneously!

Happy Birthdays, S. Weasel, Uncle AL and Mrs. Uncle AL!

🎈🎈🎈🎁🎁🎁🎊🎊🎊🎂🎂🎂🥃🥃🥃🥂🥂🥂🍻🍺🎈🎈🎈

Add Mrs D and Durnedson #3
5/8 and 5/26 respectively.

Clearly August is a busy month!

H A P P Y _ B I R T H D A Y ! ! !

But, wait . . . indolence or insolence?

I’ve run into this VPN thing several times, thefritz. The thing that really irritates is when the so-called technical support people (real or AI) react as if they’ve never encountered it before. It’s got to the point that whenever I run into a problem with a website, I just switch the VPN off and try again before raising the alarm.