Yippeee!!! Father’s Day is on the horizon and, once again, we’re here to give you the most absolutely perfect advice about how to celebrate your father, step-father, someone else’s father who’s shacking up with mom now, the person who used to be your father and is now not quite a birthing person, your secret father who drops off the mail six days a week…take your pick.

Don’t get me wrong, here. I am absolutely going to accept any free bourbon or smoked meat that’s passed my way next Sunday. And it goes without saying that I’ll bask in the glow of a few hours spent with my kids and grandkids. Still, in the competition between Father’s Day and Mother’s Day, the special time to honor dear old dad comes in a distant fourth.

And why not? Father’s Day isn’t really about fathers and their roles, anyway, and that’s a true fact. Every holiday has an origin story and the Father’s Day saga is very, very telling.

According to detailed internet research (four websites!!!), the first known Father’s Day was held in 1908 to memorialize the 362 miners killed in an explosion at the Monongah coal mine in West Virginia. It was the worst mining accident in U.S. history and it only took seven months for someone to come up with the idea of honoring those men.

It made a great deal of sense to pay tribute to the fallen, who were essentially a bunch of dads doing what dads did at the time. They went off to work in the coal mines and risked their lives doing it in order to put food on the table. Needless to say, the idea of honoring dads for their work did not exactly catch on.

All was not lost, though. In the following year, a new type of Father’s Day was invented. In this case, a woman who was raised, along with five siblings, by a widowed father, was inspired to come up with a celebration honoring her father and others who shouldered the burden usually handled by moms.

So, let’s be sure we’re on the same page here. A tribute to men who actually died on the job did not catch on, but Father’s Day was born because a man changed diapers. (Fun fact: that was actually the last time a man was recorded to have changed diapers before reaching 85 years of age.) It took quite a while to gain momentum, too, as we didn’t get Father’s Day as a national holiday until 1972…and we needed Richard Nixon to do it. If he’d held off just two more years, we’d still be waiting.   

To be fair, men weren’t really hot about the idea, either. Even in 1908, they’d figured out that new holidays were just an excuse to spend money on useless gifts and they were understandably hesitant about working more hours than absolutely necessary in the coal mines.

We’ve all gotten used to the idea, though, and this coming Sunday will be a fun-filled festival of family conviviality. To help our readers find the perfect gift for their patriarchal progenitor, we’ve scoured all the pop-up ads that greet us every morning and we know the perfect gift: a liquor bottle in the shape of a golf ball. Yes, it cannot fail and you will thank me later, or now if you are of the mind.

According to the marketing genii who put together can’t-miss ad campaigns, the two things every father loves are golf and alcohol, often simultaneously. Pretty much everything that popped up on my feed was connected to these fetishes and the algorithms are never, ever wrong. 
 
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We should be encouraging kids to be more critical, and the miracle of breath mints, among the many brain storms bumping around these days...

• ICED BY AI-GENTS. It’s been a long slide into hell and, now, it’s time to abandon all hope. I’d become quite adept at yelling “Agent!!!!” only once or twice on the way to escaping voice-prompt HELL. Now, I actually need to debate with an AI-gent about my need to deal with a human being. Not a lot of debating, though, because the latest AI-gent concluded that my call was absolutely not important to them, so it hung up on me.
• CHECK MY MATH HERE. I wrote a while ago about being so confident in my longevity that I actually bought a roll of stamps. Now, I’ve doubled down by buying a set of checks. Don’t get too excited, though, because I only bought 50, which should only last until I’m 127.
• LITERALLY SNAIL MAIL? Meanwhile, the company that prints the checks sent me a note to let me know my order was on the way. It was coming through their “standard shipping,” which they estimated would take 15 days. I have no idea what kind of shipping they’re using here, but I suspect they want to exceed expectations.
• ALL ABOUT THE AMBIANCE. A dad and his daughter walk into the hot dog joint and he strikes up a conversation with the owner, because he wants to discuss bathrooms. More specifically, he wants to thank the owner for having a clean bathroom that his child can use, and then he wants to mention some experiences with less sanitary facilities. 
• AND THEN HE RESTED? There are ideas we just take as a given, mostly because they were given to us when we were born and given to our parents when they were born and…you get the idea. But, if those things didn’t exist, could they be adopted, or even accepted, today? There’s no way cable cars or pickles or even bacon would be considered safe enough for humans. What about bigger things, though, like God? If there were no religions yet and someone came up with the concept of an all-knowing, all-powerful deity, would it gain traction?
• NOT TO BE UNCRITICAL. The most important thing we need to teach children is critical thinking skills, the ability to analyze what they see and recognize the shards of glass in the pudding. We’re pretty much doomed without that, which means we’re pretty much doomed already.
• DATA SURGE. After critical thinking skills, we need more rote learning. Yes, it seems like exactly the opposite of critical thinking, but it’s hard to assess anything intelligently without a solid foundation of facts.
• THANKS FOR SHARING. Never turn down a breath mint. At the least, it’s a friendly bit of sharing. More likely, it’s a statement.

 
 
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I took a photography trip a couple of months ago and ended up in Costa Rica, which is one of the many nations whose name I can spell. Sometimes.

Not being a total nincompoop, I knew that Costa Rica means “rich coast” in English, although I had no idea if it was the Pacific or the Caribbean coast that’s richer. I wasn’t even sure if it’s the coast that’s rich or maybe some guy named Rich built an estate there, but I definitely knew enough to buzz in if I was on Jeopardy! and the $100 answer was, “This country’s name means Rich Coast.”

As a photographer, I was very excited to visit Costa Rica, eager to see the volcanoes and jungles and trees and, especially, to take pictures of sloths. As we all know, sloths are xenarthran mammals that constitute the suborder Folivora, which means something extremely sexual in Latin, or maybe French.

They’re a national symbol of Costa Rica, much like the Limu Emu in the States, and you can find them in trees all over the country.

Sloths are great subjects for photography, because they’re easy to spot if you have a really good guide and the Hubble telescope, and because they’re really funny looking. They’re big and hairy and they have faces that look like someone who overdid the plastic surgery just a little bit and decided to go back to basics.

The best thing about them for a photographer, though, is that they move very, very slowly. They eat a high-fiber diet, which is great for keeping them, uh, regular, but they don’t get a ton of calories in a week. Moving slowly conserves energy, and that gives me time to adjust my sensor and my shutter speed and my aperture and figure out I have the wrong lens on the camera and change the lens and then realize my camera settings won’t work as well with the new lens, so I have to start over.

With most wildlife, I finish with my settings and point the camera and discover that they’ve moved to a different forest, so I’ll need to change lenses again to get the shot. Not sloths, though. I could get on a plane and go back to the States, stop in at the camera store, buy a new lens, fly back to Costa Rica---which means rich coast—and still get the picture.

That doesn’t mean sloth photography is easy, though. As with everything else in life, there’s a catch. Sloths spend almost all their time in the trees, coming back to earth about once a week to poop, eat a bunch of leaves, and recharge their phones. In the trees, they can look like giant hairy lumps on a branch. When they descend, they look like giant hairy lumps on the ground. They also look a lot like my uncle Kenny at the beach, and both are a sight to cherish.

They had a sloth sanctuary near my hotel, so I signed up for one of the guided tours and saw three or four of the hairy beasts in just a few hours. Well, I’m not actually sure I saw any sloths, since they were so high in the trees and blocked by so much foliage they could have been Uncle Kenny. I’ve never seen Uncle Kenny climb a tree, though, so I’m going to take the guide’s word for it that they were sloths.

I had much better luck on the road, where there was a giant traffic jam caused by a sloth moving from one tree to another. Apparently, I wasn’t the only person who got shortchanged at the so-called “sloth sanctuary,” as dozens of turistas (tourists) ditched their automovils (automobiles) to take a foto (photo) and enjoy the vista (vista).

Another great thing about sloths is that they don’t seem to be concerned about people. As the mob crowded around the tree, our new friend didn’t panic and try to climb back up like Quasimodo or King Kong, preferring to continue doing whatever he/she/it/they   was/were  doing before I got there. Or, maybe, he/she/it/they   was/were   running away, but so slowly nobody would know the difference.

Either way, watching those Folivoras was well worth the effort and I’d encourage all photographers to make the trip. Send me a note and I’ll let you know exactly where I captured my best shots. I’m pretty sure   he/she/it/they   are/is   still there.
 
 
 

Like most of my elderly peers, I can’t remember where I parked the car or why I’m sporting a fake mustache and wearing a tutu on the bus, but I do remember all kinds of undelivered promises from tsunamis past.

The internet was going to make us all smarter and more connected to each other. Nuclear energy was going to eliminate air pollution and slash electricity prices. Space exploration was going to give us rocket belts and vacations on Mars. Instead, we got an explosion of isolation, Three Mile Island…and Tang.

The memories are coming back as I listen to AI zealots, and I really have to wonder if anyone has thought this through. I’m not even talking about the oft-stated odds (10-20%) that some AI model will create an extinction event. It could be a perfectly logical nuclear war or an absolutely irrefutable assessment of humans as a dangerous species to be eradicated or a decision to replace agricultural lands with data farms. However it happens, we’re toast.

(And don’t you just love the fact that people talk about an “extinction event”? Doesn’t it sound so much nicer than “AAAAGHHHH!!! WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE!!!!!!!!!!”)

I’m not sure there is anything I would do on any given day if I knew it had a 10-20% chance of getting killed. Those percentages are much worse than any airplane trip, bike ride, bungee jump…possibly even worse than that greasy, cheesy thing Taco Bell is hawking this week. To be fair, though, 10-20% is still better than my odds any time I go to Chipotle.

I can ignore the extinction problem for as long as the Valium holds out, maybe longer. The experts say AI-rmageddon will take a while to unfold and one of the big benefits of being very, very old is that I probably won’t live to see it, anyway. Sucks for the rest of you, but it’s one of the few advantages I have as I head into the home stretch.

No, I’m thinking about other issues, and the whole thing really makes no sense.

First, the numbers are impossible. The total amount of AI investment announced by major corporations will require more energy and more dollars and take more time than is everyone thinks. Costs will exceed forecasts, projects will take much longer than planned, and data centers will overwhelm the electrical grid. Some of these companies will fail, taking suppliers and/or customers with them, and the environmental impact is going to be huge. Some of these snags have already developed, so this isn’t “someday” stuff.

Everyone on Wall Street knows this, but the train has left the station, stocks are bubblicious, and the experts believe they’ll know the exact moment to exit before the, um, correction. This is why Warren Buffett says it’s so hard to make money from transformational technologies. Too many competitors enter the market, speed bumps delay and derail progress, and a large percentage of investor money gets cremated. Somebody will come out on top, but (SPOILER ALERT!) it won't be you.

Before that happens, though, we have to deal with AI’s immense drain on corporate efficiency. Yes, I said drain. We’ll read a million stories about some job that’s getting done in half the time, but history is written by the victors. Throughout the economy, people will be submitting erroneous reports that cost their companies both money and customers. New products will explode, sometimes literally. And, we’ll all be spending hundreds of hours double-checking the answers we get from formerly reliable searches.

If every search now includes a disclaimer that, “AI can make mistakes, so double-check responses,” why am I using it? Even worse, if every search engine is using AI, where do I go to verify anything?

That brings us to people, who will be a drag on the system until AI has the courage to do the right thing and kill us all. If there’s one thing we learned during Covid, it’s that people are dumber and lazier than we ever thought possible. Giving us access to AI tools is like giving a hand grenade to a toddler.

Every day, millions of us will be churning out reports and analyses generated by AI and never, ever checked for errors. Recipients will be assigning AI tools to read and assess those missives. Humans will voluntarily step aside, let the LLMs do their work, and then act surprised when they get cut out of the chain.

Finally, let’s talk about money. Ultimately, capitalism depends on people buying products and services, which they pay for with the money they earn making the products and delivering the services. As companies shed workers in order to invest their former salaries in new AI technology, the number of people who can buy stuff declines as well.

Businesses always want to get more revenue with fewer employees, but there is a tipping point and we have no idea when we’ll hit it…if we haven’t passed the point-of-no-return already.  The natural progression is to have more machines talking to other machines and, eventually, they won’t need people to oil their bearings. At that point, what supports the economy?

Some seers suggest we'll need a Universal Basic Income, an idea so popular it got Andrew Yang nearly twelve votes in 2020. But UBI requires that every company pay the government to give money to unemployed people so they have enough cash to buy stuff. I’m not sure if that’s socialism or communism, but it doesn’t matter. Eventually, the robots will conclude that money is 100% unnecessary if they simply get rid of those pesky humans.

At that point, an extinction event will be the most logical, efficient solution. By then, maybe the robots will be right.

 
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Sharing a word to the whys this week as my befuddlement expands…

• Why does my mind go blank every time someone asks me a question? I could be thinking about some movie I liked and a friend will ask me about my favorite movies and, bammo, I can’t think of any movies. Ditto for jokes, books I’ve read, restaurants I like, and the names of my kids. I’d be a great spy, because I wouldn’t be able to remember any secrets, even if I was being tortured, as long as my captors asked me a direct question.
  
• Why am I so afraid of vegetables? They’re already dead when I get to the grocery store, so it’s not like they’re going to jump up and stab me. (Are they?)  Still, I only trust the few veggies I ate as a child and I’m surprisingly intimidated when I get to exotic delicacies like rutabagas and eggplant and zucchini. Will I ever overcome this phobia, or am I doomed to carrots and peas forever?
  
• Why is it that nobody seems to be particularly happy when singing happy birthday? Yeah, we all smile and sing, but it’s really tiresome and most of us resent the speed bump on our way to the cake. And while we’re on the subject, does anyone really look happier, or more attractive, when they say cheese?
  
• Why would I expect any employee to proofread a document produced by ChatGPT or Claude or Copilot or any other LLM? “Gee, if I make this AI document really, really good, maybe I can get fired three weeks sooner,” said no one ever.
  
• Why do the servers in fancy restaurants think we’re illiterate? Every time I go to a fancy joint, the server spends about four minutes explaining the menu, telling me where the appetizers are listed (under the heading “Appetizers”) and how to find the salads (under "Salads”).  In a diner, the servers never tell me where they sourced the lettuce and, sometimes, if I’m really, really lucky, they don’t even tell me their names.
  
• Why am I still answering follow-up surveys when they aren’t even going through the motions anymore? It used to be that I’d be asked to reply to questions that would be reviewed later. Now, some of the surveys just say my answers will be recorded with no mention of anyone looking at the responses ever.
  
• Why am I spending half my day doing nothing? Well, I’m not exactly doing zero. Mostly, I’m waiting. I could be waiting for everyone to un-mute for the Zoom call or waiting for the guy ahead of me to notice the light turned green or waiting for the last kernel to pop in the microwave. It seems one third of my life is spent sleeping and another third is spent in limbo. 
• Why do I need to go through 27-factor authentication just to pay my electric bill? Does Commonwealth Edison think some ne’er-do-well is going to hack into my account and throw a couple hundred bucks my way?
  

 
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I’ve always thought of myself as a hard-working, mission-first kinda guy, but lately I’m realizing that lazy people are wayyyyyyy smarter than I am. In fact, laziness might be a bigger sign of smarts than any IQ test, or even Wordle.

Giving credit where it’s due, I owe this remarkable insight to my trainer, who has disabused me of my erroneous assumptions while abusing me in almost every other way imaginable. Every week, he has me doing 2,000 squats or 800 pushups or 500 crunches and, like any good student, I struggle and strain to complete the task.

But here’s the thing. Once I’ve finished the job, I don’t get a break. Nope, the reward for lifting a couple thousand pounds is the opportunity to lift another thousand, and a thousand after that. Pretty soon, I’ll have quads the size of Philadelphia, but I don’t think that will appease him a bit.

I had a few moments to think about it the other day, while I was walking off a leg cramp, and it occurred to me that this exercise thing is not an outlier. When I had an office job, I was one of the hardest workers in the place. No matter what the boss threw at me, I tackled it and completed it and took pride in my capabilities.

And we all know what happened next, don’t we? Instead of a bonus or a day off, my reward for working hard was the opportunity to work harder. At first, I felt all warm and fuzzy when someone said, “You’re really good at this. Why don’t you take the first crack at it?” Eventually, though, I realized that I was at the desk until ten and all the people who weren’t as "really good at this" were living real lives outside the office.

My sister used to tell me, “Once you take on a job, you own it.” It turns out she’s much smarter than I thought, because that’s one pattern that continues as infinitely as a Mobius strip. Whether it’s work or exercise or cooking or cleaning or making the vacation plans or the social plans…you get the idea…the person who does the work is doomed like Sisyphus to do even more.

That’s why lazy people are so much smarter, and probably happier, than the rest of us. If the boss wants a job done, she doesn’t give it to a lazy bum who’s likely to miss the deadline. If someone gives up after lifting only three Volkswagens, the trainer doesn’t give them a fourth. If someone wants dinner, they don’t ask the person who won’t remember to turn on the oven.

And so on.

To be fair, every lazy person has to work, at least sometimes. Even the biggest sloth in the office needs to put in just enough effort to keep their job. There’s no point in dodging tasks if there are no assignments to evade. Clearly, laziness is a talent that requires great intellect and skill...an ability to be just sluggish enough to avoid work, without being so slow that you avoid a paycheck, as well.

That’s a talent I’d love to develop at some point, and I’m 100% willing to work nonstop to become the laziest person you’ve ever known. 
 
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