Day: January 14, 2023

Rory’s Morning Dawdler — 01/14/23

Fandango15 Comments

Rory, the king of questions, also known as the Autistic Composter, has come up with a new series of questions that he calls “The Morning Dawdler.” He poses four questions three times a week, questions he says are “inspired by life, humor, conversations and observations, town life, blog posts, writers, gardening, news stories, television, entertainment, and human curiosity, and so on.”

Here are Rory’s four morning dawdler questions for today.

What are your views on Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex’s published memoir ‘Spare’ and the media coverage supporting it – even if you haven’t read the book?

My views on Prince Harry are about the same as my views on the Kardashian clan. I couldn’t care less.

Is the glass half full or half empty for you?

I used to be an optimistic, glass half full type. These days, though, I’m not even a glass half empty type. To me, the glass is pretty much fully empty.

In your opinion – as individuals, do we matter and if so/not why?

Okay, you might notice a theme in my answers this morning. I’m not in a very good mood, and given what is going on in the world today, I’m not sure that anything matters anymore.

What mistakes do you make over and over?

Thinking that common sense, decency, compassion, dignity, scruples, and tolerance exist in politics.

SoCS — I Promise I Won’t Do This Again

Fandango19 Comments

When I read that Linda’s instructions for this week’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt were to start our posts with “Once upon a time,” I couldn’t resist going to a chatbot, ChatGPT, and asking it to write a story starting with “Once upon a time.” Here is what the chatbot delivered:

Once upon a time, in a faraway kingdom, there lived a brave young knight. He was exceedingly loyal to his king, and was well respected for his bravery and courage.

One day, the knight was sent on a quest by his king. His mission was to find a magical item from a secret location deep in a distant forest. The knight set out on his quest with two horses and a faithful hound. As he travelled along, he encountered many strange and wondrous creatures. He bravely faced them all without fear, and eventually made it to his destination.

There, amidst a clearing in the dark woods, stood a magnificent tree. At the foot of this tree was a small chest. Within it held the magical item the knight had been sent to find. He grabbed the item with both hands and opened it. To his surprise, a beautiful necklace made of silver and gold was nestled inside.

The knight returned to the castle, where he presented the magical item to the king. The king was very pleased and awarded the knight with a wealth of riches.

The knight lived happily ever after with his family and friends. He never forgot the magical necklace that had started it all, and kept it with him for the rest of his days.

I read it and I thought it was, well, awful. I think, given the same instructions, a second grader probably could have done a better job.

I decided to run the story through a program that detects writing generated by a chatbot. Sure enough, the AI detector found a 99.91% likelihood that this story was written by a chatbot.

Okay. I’m done thinking about, posting about, and experimenting with ChatGPT AI chatbots. I promise that I won’t do this again. Well, in the short-term, anyway.

FOWC with Fandango — Stodgy

Fandango22 Comments
FOWC

It’s January 14, 2023. Welcome to Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (aka, FOWC). I will be posting each day’s word just after midnight Pacific Time (U.S.).

Today’s word is “stodgy.”

Write a post using that word. It can be prose, poetry, fiction, non-fiction. It can be any length. It can be just a picture or a drawing if you want. No holds barred, so to speak.

Once you are done, tag your post with #FOWC and create a pingback to this post if you are on WordPress. Please check to confirm that your pingback is there. If not, please manually add your link in the comments.

And be sure to read the posts of other bloggers who respond to this prompt. Show them some love.