Early- to mid-October farmer's market hoarding:

1) I buy like 4 pounds of large and well-shaped but not yet ripe tomatoes at a good price ($3 a pound!), but then after paying I stand there and think more and I go and buy 5 pounds more, since they're the type that keeps well on the counter as they ripen and rarely go bad unexpectedly, so why not, when they're right there in front of me.

The (darker-skinned) (moustachioed) (Mexican) grandfather guy who's there selling them with his family tells me that they're good for salsa, too, as I say that I mostly keep them for use raw in salads, but I could also use them in soups. 

He also says even if they get a little spot on them, you just cut it off and use the rest, adding that some people throw those out, with a disbelieving shake of his head.

2) The specialty tomato stand has no more watermelons for that day or for the rest of the season, and the (soft-spoken) (taller) (older) (black) man there says that one guy came in early that day and bought up all of their last 6 watermelons, and that was that for the year. 

Two recent glancing encounters with LLMs (i.e. so-called "AI"):

1) The one (tatted) (young) (white) (hipster) hairstylist at the hipster haircut place that I tried out for a haircut was saying that a lot of students have been telling her that they've been having a hard time finding jobs, and then someone in town who did financials or financial work or something for a local consulting firm was telling her that his bosses went all-in on so-called "AI," laid off half their staff, discovered that they actually couldn't do without them, and then couldn't recover and had to shut down entirely, putting like 40 people out of work.

"Forty people lost their jobs because of that," she was like.

"We live in the stupidest reality," I was like. 

2)  My one (professor) friend who studies (modern) (Czech) literature has been postponing retirement, and on top of that she was recently telling me by text that "I am sick of teaching and getting pretty bad at it."

I pressed on why -- she's always been known as a top-tier teacher -- and she noted as one factor that "people are getting stupider," then specifying when pressed that it's "[o]ver reliance [sic] on technology to think for them" and "AI to answer everything, even basic questions."

She then clarified that "they don't even question" the factuality problem with LLMs, which are like automated bullshitters that spew out common, plausible language patterns without regard for or ability to comprehend any underlying facts.

. . .

. . .

. . .

!!!

. . . 

I would like to note that this is at a supposedly top university.

These kids are f*cked. 

The homelessness problem this summer...

...in the one college town that I now live in, as I take the bus into work one late afternoon and pass by various successive stations that I always go by:

1) A (black) guy is lying on the bench with his head on some travel bag in one bus shelter by me, when you get up towards the gas station by a main road.

2) By a main campus bar as we stop there, another (black) guy is just lying shirtless on his back on the busy sidewalk there about ten feet in from the corner, on a stretch of pavement that no-one is walking on since everyone is giving him wide berth and walking quite a ways around him.

3) Farther up by a (late night) (Chinese) restaurant that's just opening up for the day, a (dirty) (dreaded) (sunburnt) (white) (white) guy is drinking out of a paper bag, as he sits on a big planter there.

Some moments from a day at work this early summer...

...at the one (Irish-y) burger joint in the first floor of a historic hotel, where I work now:

1) I'm stuffed up with grass pollen, but I go to take out some buffalo wings and WHOA, the smell coming off them just clears me up.

2) The whiteboard in the "server alley" where section assignments are written as well as notes and lists of stuff that we need to buy has a mention that we're out of HAND PAPER TOWELS, only the way it's written, it looks like HAND PAPI TOWELS, so I take various people over to it and point to it and am like, "Who's papi?"

"That's [first name of the one (young) (taller) (macho) (Guatemalan) cook]," says the one (younger) (plumpish) (hair streak-dyed) (mid-Southern) waitress, and "Here, papi," she's like, making a gesture like she's handing him towels.

3) At drinks after work for the birthday of the one (younger) (plumpish) (hair streak-dyed) (mid-Southern) waitress, our one (younger) (bearded) (vaguely Jewish) (local) coworker has to get going soon because he has to go see his girlfriend, who just got back from study abroad in (Italy), and we ask about that, and it turns out that as part of her graphic design curriculum she was even making advertising for this one surgical history museum there, which she actually found quite stomach-churning, since she had to look at all these old anatomical models and specimens and stuff.

"And that's why why they call it graphic design," I'm like. 

Another corporate scam:

This spring, I open up my app for the local electronic bicycles, and there's all these crazy text-dense pop-ups for a subscription service that I have to close out before I can even begin to access the normal start screen where you just pay per ride, and only after I check out and park my bike and check my text messages do I find a receipt text and I realize that I must have somehow clicked through to purchase a monthly subscription without ever meaning to.

So, I contact them, and they say that they can't refund the subscription price because I already used it once, even though I used it without being aware that I had purchased it, and it doesn't matter to them when I point out that not once in my entire life except for this very time have I ever purchased something accidentally like that, and it must be the way they have it set up on the incoming screen, which they should check out so it doesn't entrap more customers, because that's whack that someone can think they're closing out windows and instead they authorize a purchase on their credit card.

Fortunately, I contacted my credit card company, and although I first tried to channel this through "unauthorized purchase," that would have made me have to cancel and replace my whole credit card, but then I tried this "unauthorized recurring purchase" option that they have for timeshares and stuff, and I told them what happened and they reversed the like $8 in charges and sustained me in an investigation, so that was that.

I mean, it was only $8, but I hate to be d*cked around by companies like that.  It's so slimy. 

Memories of the week befoe graduation, earlier this year.

1) The one (introverted) (white) manager with tattoos suggests in the week leading up to graduation that if I have some spare time, I should re-fold the t-shirts in the entry display case, since they got messed up and I like to clean things.

2) A small table of a handful of (older) (white) people are in and the lady says that it's her 95th birthday and she wants wine, so I'm like, "Are you getting a bottle?", and she's like "Oh no, not that much!", so when they leave I tell them that even if they're not painting the town red tonight, I hope that they at least manage to paint it a light pink.

The importance of some memories.

All these months later after his academic exchange here, like more than half a year later, the one (worked-out) (STEM) (Brazilian) still has this picture up on his WhatsApp, where it's him striding down a snowy sidewalk, from a photoshoot that he called me in for after a snowstorm.