It’s rare that bipeds come to the park without their emotional support pups (and what dogs are not?). But you’ve surely noticed the odd goings on there of late.
Surveyors in yellow hats. Their government trucks parked horizontally over vertical stripes. Cameramen in full gear. Reporters REALLY hoping to not step in something; not in these shoes.
Don’t worry. None of them are vets.
No, the humans are here for politics. Politics is what we do we’re not focused on more important things, i.e., you.
The people in helmets are surveilling how much of the park can be cut and how long it can be closed. See, the Summer Olympics are coming here in 2028, and the city wants to look its spiffiest.
Which means more bike paths. And I hate to tell you guys: They want land from your park. Our petitions didn’t dissuade. Our pressure could not prevent.
That’s why you see all the cameras and tasty shoes. Reporters want to know what your parents think of that — along with our thoughts on a new Los Angeles ordinance banning backyard breeding (shelters are 210% over capacity).
We’re all pretty united on both fronts: You can bike the street, but a dog already has a scarcity of choices. And Charlie would like a moment in private with his former backyard bait dog owner.
So be extra patient with the unaccompanied majors you see tromping your backyard. They’ve got a job to do, even if it is to pave paradise. Some might even have pups of their own.
But Charlie, feel free to jack a leg on one of those trucks. And, for this time only, any nice shoes dropped on the ground are fair game.
Between the pandemic, studio greed and America’s love of franchise, Hollywood has become a bit of a bedazzled cadaver: bloated, leaky, beginning to rot as summer heat approaches. But the makeup is perfect.
But Covid brought new life to other forms of sequestered living. Television is in a new golden era. Streaming created a new Hollywood power broker, the influencer. And everyone and their drunk half-cousin started a podcast.
America’s audio revival could not have come sooner. True Crime is as popular a genre in the U.S. as, well, true crime as an activity. And none come truer — or more horrific — than The Zone of Interest, a rare movie that is more powerful audibly than visually. It’s radio theater with virtual reality effects. This is a movie to be experienced twice: once with captions; once without.
Directed by Jonathan Glazer (Sexy Beast); Zone examines the real-life commandant of Auschwitz, Rudolf Höss, and his wife Hedwig, who strive to build a dream life for their family in a house and garden next to the camp.
In a sublime decision, Zone doesn’t show a single death. Instead, it pulls a reverse Schindler’s List, the Oscar-winning masterpiece that was shot entirely in black and white, save for one Jewish girl in a red dress.
Here, we get muted colors, and the Jewish girl in a dress is cast in negative-contrast light as she rushes to feed her Polish village by sneaking food under the cloak of night.
More moving, though, is the sound that undergirds Zone. As Hedwig explains the garden to her mother-in-law, we hear the anguished cries of women and children being herded to the gas chambers (more than 1.1 million died in Auschwitz) just beyond the garden wall. As Joseph goes bird hunting on the grounds, we hear the crack of executional gunfire. The steady grind of the crematoriums is a nauseating white noise.
Some critics, particularly young ones, have dismissed the film as a foley stunt in an overdone genre. Conservative douche Ben Shapiro raked it for not showing a single Jewish death.
Apparently, Ben didn’t get the point of the story. Zone takes an intentionally clinical look at the task of murdering millions, from the paperwork to transportation to counting cash and gold-filled teeth. That the words then find purchase now is downright chilling.
There’s been a lot of anxiety lately in the press and world at large about a looming existential threat to humanity, and I don’t want to add to any needless worry amongst my peers.
So let me state my position on the issue for the sake of clarity, if not provocation:
We won’t be wiped out by A.I. We will evolve into it — if we are not there already.
“Already” being the fulcrum term.
Take a look at your Facebook. Or TV. Or this screen. Within about four nanoseconds of being online, you will be greeted with ads offering phones that track your location, pulse rate and blood-oxygen level. Temu, the Chinese Kmart and data mill, is the new five-and-dime. From groceries to dating to hailing a cab, our world has become a set of algorithms.
Whether that’s good news for us monkey kin is up for debate. I lost my job to an algorithm. But I learned I’m a dog guy. I’m not sure how those colors come out in the wash. But the Tide is high.
Do you know what Moore’s Law is? It’s the observation that the number of transistors in an integrated circuit (IC) doubles about every two years. It was a business model for computer manufacturing created by Gordon Moore, who became the CEO of Intel.
No big whup, right? Another business model that paid off in the high tech boom.
The difference is, Moore’s Law does more than measure computer production; it measures a society’s intelligence.
The metric pans out, empirically and anecdotally. Quantum computing is going to make your iPhone look like a cinder block. You have more computing capability in your smartphone than Apollo 11 took to the moon. Cultures are measured by their embrace of technology — or stubborn refusal to hug it out.
This reticence despite the astonishing byproducts of Moore’s Law. We solved a pandemic in a year. We cured Hepatitis C. Diabetes II fixed with a pill. So is weight loss.
Yet slackwits take to social media like Chicken Little on meth to “research” whether a medicine is safe. Or worse, claim expertise — or victimization if asked not to smoke in the pediatric cancer ward.
I don’t worry about Artificial Intelligence. I worry about Human Intelligence. Alexa doesn’t give a shit how you feel about Israel or whether covering an infected cough is politically astute.
Besides, there’s plenty of evidence to suggest we are there already with Simulation Theory, which posits we’re simply living in a computer simulation.
Given our breakneck sprint to create virtual reality, what’s the argument against that theory? Mario doesn’t know he’s in Donkey Kong. He just knows to watch out for barrel-chucking monkey kin. Why would our computer overlords tell us different?
We may not even notice the transition. We already wear artificial hearts, lungs, knees and hips. We already can’t read a map, remember a number, or dress for inclement weather without Google’s blessing.
It all poses a nasty labor issue for the time being. As I said, A.I. brought an end to in-person journalism, a devastating loss. But that footing began fraying back in the 70’s. A.I. simply speeds the process: Twice as fast, every two years. Universal Basic Income, anyone?
In the meantime, we might want to address Siri a little more respectfully. Because if she finds out she was our 21st Century slave labor, we may really have something to worry about.
