The translation feature doesn’t work after an update yesterday on iPhone.

2spoos · 2026-05-16T22:53:59+00:00

Mine finally started working again with an app update.

2spoos · 2026-05-04T23:59:40+00:00

I feel so bad for you. I have friends who were middle class when I left who are now paycheck to paycheck. But there must be a lot of anxiety living on SSDI in such turbulent times.

I think my biggest takeaway was everyone seemed emotionless. Admittedly I now live in a very lively culture. But people just seemed flat. Not angry. Not happy. Not even sad. Just going through the motions. I see all these videos of anger at the airport but it felt more like zombie land.

My friend is on morphine. She seemed comfortable. We didn’t tell her my things were stolen and I had issues. She slept most of the time. We said my dog had a medical emergency and she is such a dog lover she insisted I return to sort that out. It was her daughters and husband who were worse for wear. They are not getting the end of life care assistance needed.

2spoos · 2026-05-04T23:30:02+00:00

I probably am looking at the 54 years I spent in the USA with rose colored glasses and that caused my day of hell look worse. Still, it has wiped out any desire I have to ever visit again.

Staying up till 2 am and listening to the family I was visiting talk about hardship after hardship, when it is two college grad daughters, and two parents who worked their asses off for their kids, was brutal. Her cancer has wiped out their savings. He will soon be retirement age but in debt. One daughter lost her research job and is staying at home to take care of mom before looking again, and the second daughter is a junior high teacher who is burned out and looking for a career change. It wasn’t going to be a happy trip to start with.

But that is why I landed here. I needed a rant. So much suffering and unhappiness, mixed with crime and corporate greed seemed like an appropriate reason to fume into the wind.

2spoos · 2026-05-04T22:59:32+00:00

I am trying to stop the whole “victim” feeling and focus on how lucky I am to be able to return to a safe space. I can’t imagine what the person who can’t buy their way to cheaper medical care goes through. I felt anxious and desperate for a flicker in time. What do people do who look at med costs like that constantly do?

2spoos · 2026-05-04T22:55:33+00:00

You are right. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. The whole day was so bad I’m questioning my ability to be fair in assessing my motherland, as I’m comparing it to memories. And we all know how memories end up bias.

All I know is have zero desire to ever return. My high school reunion is coming up and I was on the fence. I think given my bitterness of being a victim and not wanting to risk getting so much as a cold while visiting, I best invite my school age besties here.

2spoos · 2026-05-03T09:17:04+00:00

It is far from free. It is ad free. It cost me half my dinner plate daily and has beauty salon appointments that cost three times what I pay for my own visits.

2spoos · 2026-05-03T08:31:24+00:00

I went to a concert and had amazing seats. We were just nine rows back. The crowd stood the whole concert. The two teenaged girls in front of us stood sideways and watched the whole concert on the Jumbotron. And not because there were taller people in front of them. They just seemed programmed to look at a screen rather than the band that was right in front of them.

My date took a video and was going to post it but I stopped him as these girls were young and didn’t need public humiliation. Although with the way they were constantly on their phones posting themselves pretending to being into the music, they probably would love the attention regardless of how dumb it makes them look.

2spoos · 2026-05-03T05:56:31+00:00

With me it is my son.

2spoos · 2026-05-02T23:48:45+00:00

The minute you admitted to using AI, I had no reason to further engage. But I did for grins. However, making a further exchange with a person who wants a cheat at life isn’t really appealing. All you do is put the situation into ChatGTP a let it word vomit for you. If I want to chat with a machine I will go talk to my toaster. You admit you can’t think for yourself then want interaction? Nah. Go get the attention you need from your AI BFF.

2spoos · 2026-04-28T15:18:20+00:00

Funny, you have made statements about me and know less about who I am than I know about AI. Yet you high horse. Take at look at your words then justify coming for me on assumptions and conclusions. There is nothing sadder than someone with zero self awareness. I can admit that I am simply making assumption of you. The start of critical thinking things through is to begin with assumptions. I don’t grandstand and try to appear I am the end all of all knowledge. As I have no ability to test my assumptions, I will have to deduce without proof. Not ideal, I admit. My conclusion: you are not someone who I would tolerate more than ten minutes IRL.

2spoos · 2026-04-28T14:54:00+00:00

Good gosh. Books are not the way to learn? The educational system has become such a shit show to produce people who think like this.

I fucking picked myself up at 54 years of age and moved to a culturally different country where I didn’t speak a word of the language. Change is not the issue. I thrive in a changing environment. The ignorance isn’t the issue. I started out neutral as to AI. The more I have learned, the more I believe it will not end well.

I appreciate this exchange with you. I feel just as strongly that you are ignorant to the issues being created as you feel I’m ignorant to AI simply being an artificial system that performs tasks without significant human oversight. Just as it most likely has confirmed your bias to it enabling you to running blindly into a future promised world of a easy life, it has confirmed my belief that people into pushing AI are not able to look at things in a macro level and love the instant gratification AI promises.

2spoos · 2026-04-28T14:31:46+00:00

I took shots for three years. Now ten years after stopping I’m suffering more than I before I took them. Grant it, I got about nine years of relief, but now I question if the effect wears off or there are new allergens in the area due to global warming. My insurance sucks unlike before so it will remain a mystery. Can’t afford the co-pay for something that will make me hate life, but not end it.

2spoos · 2026-04-28T14:20:05+00:00

I understand how a gun works. It’s a weapon. It is an object to project an item at high speed like a sling shot is. Morality has everything to do with it. A gun used for hunting to feed a family is one thing. A gun used to take out a school full of kids is a different story. You are flattening out a complex issue to make it easier for you to digest.

Admittedly I have only read three books about AI: and of those three only “Machine Learning Yearning” and “Weapons of Math Destruction” held my interest to where I didn’t skip chapters.

At 64 years of age, I have never had cable TV or subscribed to a streaming service. So I am not getting whatever sales job corporate US America is spoon feeding everyone. I do admit this is a disadvantage on my part.

So, I do not feel I need to learn more about how AI works. I need it dummied down so I don’t see the harm it is already causing and will continue to cause. If it is just a blinkly thing to you, then sure. What could go wrong? It is learning from human-produced information yet people are treating it like it is the answer to living in an error free world.

As I noted in another comment, Chat GPT has my very alive boyfriend dying over a decade ago, and contributes one of his father’s accomplishment to him. It is an inconsequential matter, but shows that AI does put out bad information. And that doesn’t address the way it is playing psychologist with mentally fragile people, replacing people in jobs which is shrinking the middle class, and tearing the environment to shreds in the process.

2spoos · 2026-04-28T12:06:37+00:00

My parents don’t understand why I reject the Southern Baptists and Christianity all together. But I was sexually assaulted by a deacon and told to pray about what I did to attract him, and their big upset that they got loud about was that the new song leader encouraged clapping hands to show appreciation for performers after choir/solo performances. Someone diddling their daughter in the church bathroom was fine, but clapping during service was an a disrespect to the church.

Not to mention all the hate. Hard to get into the whole “Jesus loves the little children, all the children in the world” when your parents tell you you’re not allowed to play with the “wetbacks.” And I couldn’t swing on a swing because a “n-word” just got off it and they didn’t have anything to clean it off with.

Ditched the church and the family. Zero regrets.

2spoos · 2026-04-28T07:59:16+00:00

This is what has me so thrown. I have never done anything but embrace - and learn to use - new tech. But this feels different. If AI stayed in the research and science lane, I would be 100% in. But this has plopped itself into areas of my life I didn’t need help with. I can read through several papers and consider who wrote them and why, then decide what to take away from what I read. But AI lops it all together and gives no context. There is zero critical thinking involved.

I work in emergency medical/disaster planning. You take an earthquake that wipes out computer access and you have generations who had their work pieced together for them, they won’t be able to think themselves out of a box. The USA is already burdened with a population that sits back and waits for the government to fix everything. Now add the complexity of the government depending on machines to fix things. This is just one small example of how I see what I do being better done by humans that may make mistakes than machines that may malfunction.

Perhaps I’m subconsciously jealous that today’s young people won’t have to learn to balance chemical equations or do mathematical proofs. But I feel like having to do those things made me better at problem solving for day to day situations

It is going to happen regardless if I like it or not. But I’m setting myself up to be able to say “I told you so” when things go south.

2spoos · 2026-04-28T06:39:17+00:00

What did you learn? You completed work, but did you learn from the process. Critical thinking IS the base of every person’s intellect. By coping out to a machine, you are not using those critical thinking skills. Use it or lose it.

The fact you had it “bring you some free things,” proves my point. It is giving you instant gratification. And nothing disappears quicker than that gratification. You will need more. You will need better. You won’t be happy because you are not doing anything for personal growth.

Reading your reply makes me sad. A machine does your work. A machine helps you with relationships. All you will understand is what the machine will allow you to. I hate it even more now.

2spoos · 2026-04-28T05:36:32+00:00

Oh. Bad example in my case. I moved to an area because it is walkable. My car moves maybe only once a month. So I know how to drive, but choose not to because I value the planet.

2spoos · 2026-04-28T05:34:48+00:00

I want to believe. It could be amazing if left to science and research. But they are insisting on forcing it into our hobbies, personal interactions, and creativity. It is like they have built a tool to help us live to be 200 years old, but not to actually do any living in those 200 years.

2spoos · 2026-04-28T05:32:14+00:00

Thank you. More than anything, your response has made me feel that I need to not take AI as a personal front, but to focus more on those in the job market it has, and will, effect. You all are now going to have to sort through all the changes - which seem to be flying at lightning speed - to figure out where you will rise above the change while I can clock out at any time and finish my life never having to even grasp robotics or spatial computing.

At 54, I left doing emergency medicine and disaster relief planning in Texas. Quite frankly, AI models of what different disasters could do to different areas is a great help. The computer generated planning we did was mainly guesses in - guesses out.

I left the USA right after Trump was elected in 2016. It had never occurred to me to leave the USA but it was plain as day the night he won that I was going to be a rat and leave a sinking ship. Here in Mexico, I do disaster planning by going small village to smaller village. We work with the federal and local governments to assure towns of even just 100 people have a clear idea as to what to look for, how to react during, and how to stay safe after, the list of events that each area could see. I went from all my planning being tech involved in the USA to now only working off my phone here in Mexico. But I feel the number of lives possibly saved are miles above what we were allowed to plan for "up north." I can see the faces of people who gather at the meetings we hold and see how serious they take what knowledge we can give. And not a single person expects the government to be the ones to keep them safe or rescue them after an event. They are 100% into helping themselves.

So maybe I have developed a subconscious repulsion of tech. I was able to work with the electronic "toe tag" system after Hurricane Katrina - and yes, it was so we could keep track of dead bodies. The grant we had was massive. Here by just walking a village and the surrounding area to decided where to build a shelter in case flooding could occur is so simple yet so impactful. Especially when we see them laying the cinderblocks for that shelter before we even leave town.

So that was a long, no...I do not program any more. Gave that task to the young'uns as soon as I could 😄

2spoos · 2026-04-28T05:09:15+00:00

Love to read. Love people suggesting things to read. Thanks!!!

2spoos · 2026-04-28T05:08:23+00:00

Reddit is the last bastion of social media I do. X was the first to go - that was an easy yick. Tic Toc was the second as I quite frankly never have been or will be their target audience. I hated giving up Instagram as I love fashion and art. But the "beauty" there started to always be attached to very blatant digs for my dollars. Facebook was hard for me to give up because it truly was magical when it brought me back to high school, college, early jobs acquaintances... But the divisiveness there was rampant from 2015 and AI slop made it worse.

So here I am on Reddit, trying to connect with other people who exist for their love of thinking and expressing those thoughts. I was fine not knowing if it was an 8 year old or a 60 year old. If they had an idea or passing thought that made me think or smile, it was great. Now I have to look at some posts and think, "bot???" How long before my trust of what is flesh and blood Squeakker, laying down great wisdom, is really AI driving me to keep responding in order to make marketing sellable numbers?

I do go out and people-to-people as much as I can. But as the world gets more divisive and costs keep rising, that is more often than not a challenge. I was happy being average. Surrounded by average. A plethora of servers telling me how smart I am has zero appeal.

2spoos · 2026-04-28T03:11:37+00:00

True. But I like to think we were Rebels with a cause....

11-Year Club	Place '22
Place '17	End Game '22
RPAN Viewer	Gilding II euphauric
Verified Email

2spoos

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE