Present Needs

 Recently while I was putting together pharmacology lectures, I decided that it would be cool to use Maslow's hierarchy of needs as a reference point for what need different pharmacological products were addressing. I still feel that this is a valid approach. It's helpful to explain how an antibiotic is different from an antidepressant. There was one class which I found to be problematic: analgesics, and, more specifically, opiates. One can't help but ponder whether or not pain is in fact, the fifth vital sign, or not. Historically, opiates were used for major surgery such as amputation up until the late 1800s. It's hard to even think of this type of operation without some form.of anesthesia or analgesics. 

The Trolling Test

 It seems appropriate that we adapt our expectations of conversational AI to the most salient problems of our current times. In this vein, I would say that the “trolling test” is the most appropriate test of a conversational AI bvo

bot’s. effectiveness. Instead of evaluating these programs in isolation, why not include a real=-world trial, making use of a public service such as Twitter?

Deep Tracks

 In the old days before the Internet, there was a sort of tyranny of mainstream entertainment which users today haven't yet experienced. Water cooler conversations would be limited to Seinfeld, which was a really good show, however, there were much worse ones such as Friends, and my point is, there just wasn't the option to go into depth on some other random form of entertainment which you had stumbled across since the 'other guy' would not have heard of it and would just walk away instead. That lead to a sort of lame public commons of media consumption, in which many people watched shows that they found mediocre, simply so that they could be prepared for such water cooler conversations, media references, and just generally being 'in the know'. There were, of course, always those folks who eschewed such pedestrian content and instead retreated into their 'deep tracks', consuming their own favorite media forms. They were the hipsters before the hipsters, also known as nerds, geeks, etc. Now there isn't any need because... there's a proverbial subreddit for that. How long will this 'golden age of television' last? With media companies getting bigger, have our butts been glued back into our couches once again? Are the laugh tracks coming back? Will deep tracks go back to being the domain of the esoteric once again?

COVID is over?

 That’s the official story, but what does it really mean? Well, it’s kind of like Game of Thrones— it’s not the ending we wanted, but at least it’s over… at least until the prequel comes out. 

Slow down

Who really knows where it’s all going? So far we aren’t even close to a million years, which makes us less than 1% as successful as the dinosaurs who we’re always using as a cautionary tale. If our civilization is truly winding to its end then what has it all meant? What will future archeologists think when they One Day dig up our bones? Well at least we made some interesting creations.