Now that we have not just year and a half election campaign seasons but also month long voting, I’m trying to ignore politics as much as I find possible. The only advantage is that as an old, single guy, it makes my daily trip to the mailbox less futile because every day has at least one flyer telling me how to vote. My avoidance strategy is to watch TV, but even if I gave up the whole cable bundling silliness years ago, and rely only on streaming, I still find myself watching an occasional commercial.
Let’s start with one commercial that clanged discordantly to my ears. The commercial was for Maui Nui products. It began with an idyllic scene of the lush landscape of Maui with a herd of gracefully bounding animals frolicking. The narrator intoned, “At Maui Nui we sustainably harvest invasive Axis Deer….” It went on to tout the supposed merits of eating wild venison, but my brain couldn’t get past that opening. Why would anyone “sustainably” harvest an “invasive” species? The very definition of invasive species is one that is introduced to an eco-system from outside and that then disrupts that system by killing off or greatly diminishing native species of plants or animals. Isn’t it the appropriate “moral” goal to eliminate an invasive species rather than sustain it, so to bring the ecosystem back to its natural pristine state? If an invasive species of coral eating guppies were unleashed on the Great Barrier Reef by children flushing their unwanted goldfish down the toilet, wouldn’t your goal be to eliminate the threat to the coral by exterminating the invasive species?
The next jarring message was the advertisement for a “Lenovo AI PC”. Now, no doubt, that sounds good to the uninformed customers they target, but to someone like me who actually understands AI, or more correctly Machine Learning (ML) and Large Language Models (LLM), that name is an oxymoron. AI is the product of multi-billion record databases and giant soon-to-be nuclear powered server farms, not something you can fit in your living room. Presumably they mean that the PC they’re bragging about has the most advanced PC microchips for their graphics processing units (GPU) that can awkwardly render pictures that look mostly human. The AI buzzword no doubt sounds trendier than the most advanced chips or the fastest processor.
What? You were expecting me to write something profound? LOL then I fooled you, didn’t I?
Musings of a Restless Mind 