Monitoring the situation

Thanks, I hate it.

The poor little skunk was half-dead in our front yard. I smelled it before I saw it. My guess is a coyote got to it and then ran off after getting sprayed. I held my breath and approached the skunk carefully. It wasn’t moving, but it still raised its tail defiantly, so I noped back inside and found the number for animal control.

That same day a plumber was at our house trying to sort out our continually problematic bathroom drain.

Animal control came. I don’t know what I expected, but certainly not what went down. He took one look at the skunk and pulled a big shotgun out of his truck. He put up a makeshift screen. The screen was completely ineffective — we saw and smelled everything. He euthanized the skunk, but not before it had a final triumphant hurrah, spraying him down thoroughly.

Meanwhile, the plumber had made it up on the roof to snake out the drain. We could taste skunk from the inside with every door and window closed. The funk hit the hapless plumber and he began gagging and coughing uncontrollably. Inside, Lola the dog whined. In the front yard the animal control guy bent over gasping. He staggered towards his truck, shotgun in one hand, tearing at his face mask with the other.

My teenage daughter and I watched the whole thing go down from the front window, horrified.

R screamed, “You had one job!”

“You had one job” might be past its prime, but I laugh every time I hear it.

I recently picked up “I don’t hate that” watching curling at the Winter Olympics¹. The US team was mic’d up so you could hear them talk strategy surveying the icy layout of stones. During timeouts, the coach hustled down the ice to join in the discussion.

Over and over I heard: “I don’t hate that shot.”

That phrase now lives in my head like a cereal jingle. Fits the now. Sometimes it’s hard to get excited about stuff. “I’ll allow it” is a good companion.

Resignation. It’ll do. It has to do.

Remember the AI moment — not so long ago — when you could jailbreak a new model by telling it to “Ignore all previous instructions?” I bought a t-shirt festooned with a feral raccoon screaming that out.

Design by Molly White — get yours here.

Alas, the early, heady days of AI when it was simple and fun are well behind us. Now we’re AI haters or we’re AI pilled or we’re vibe coding.

Vibe coding will fade quicker than “you had one job.” While it’s very Jetsons for Elroy to dictate sophisticated software builds, even with AI writing all the code, software engineering isn’t a trivial undertaking, so thanks, but I hate it.

A few more from the skunk days that stuck. KOBE! Yelled in expectation as you attempted to toss something in the trashcan from a few feet away.

We’re Gucci. Cool, cool, cool. Everything is cool. Goes well with a dab.

Maybe I’ll get lucky and my high school kids will trust me with some genZ gems. You’re good. I gotta dip. That burrito was mid. ²

I’m generationally forbidden from using any of these, but entertain me.

My dad could throw down some slang. Malarkey. Stick your head between your legs and kiss your ass goodbye. He also did a mean James Cagney impersonation: “You dirty rat …”

“Monitoring the situation” is new. I relate. Doomscrolling.

But when it comes to AI, I can’t help myself.

I miss the inside scoop. Even with corporate spin it beat the talking heads and pundits. It’s grounding to use the thing on the daily with my high school kids. AI is but a few clicks away. See for yourself.

But if you don’t want to touch the stuff, you’re good — I’m monitoring the situation.

1. I didn’t intentionally watch curling, it was constantly on as filler between the more interesting events.

2. “‘No problem’; ‘I gotta go’; ‘no good.’”