I will seriously worry about ANYTHING

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This Went in an Unexpected Direction

Yesterday I spoke to an AI agent on the phone. At least, I think it was an AI. It did not announce itself as such; it called itself “Dane.” But maybe it wasn’t an AI? It was so humanoid that I wasn’t sure, so I spoke to it as though it could be a human, albeit one who was extremely adept at mixing conversational speech with call center script. Aside from a general AI vibe I got from Dane, it did some specific things that made me think it wasn’t human. I thought about listing them here, but I don’t want to. And now I’m realizing, perhaps for the first time, that everything I post here is already being digested and catalogued by non-humans.

Which of course I already knew. Surely there have been web crawlers as long as there have been search engines, identifying keywords and indexing my blog alongside every other thing posted to the internet.

If you have a blog: have you ever learned that someone unexpected reads your posts? Once, years ago, I learned that a colleague or maybe a classmate of my husband had stumbled across my blog. Obviously, that has always been possible; my posts are public. I write because I want to be read. I do try to remember that my words are public, and I do self-edit my posts in some ways. It’s not as though this person did anything nefarious, or even (as far as I know) commented on my posts or kept reading for any length of time. (If you’re still reading, hi!) It still felt odd, though, as if someone were reading over my shoulder. (Why it doesn’t feel that way all the time, I don’t know. You’re reading it, aren’t you? And that not only doesn’t bother me, it makes me happy!) Looking “being read” right in the face makes me squirmy. The same feeling applies when I think about an AI scouring the web for ideas about how to be more human, and landing on this post, and tucking my thoughts away for future instruction.

I started out thinking this would be a Five for Friday post, but apparently I want to talk about AI some more. It’s a topic I think about many times a day. It’s a subject I don’t know a whole lot about. It’s something that terrifies and fascinates me.

Let’s start here: The environmental implications of AI are massive and horrifying. Full stop.

A while back, I had a friend who seemed obsessed with LLMs. She used them all the time, and our conversations often included her saying things like, “I asked ChatGPT and it said…” or “I just put all my thoughts about X into Claude and it suggested…” She seemed to derive real insight from her interactions with AI. Sometimes, when we exchanged everyday gripes or concerns, she suggested that I turn to one of the LLMs for answers or clarity.

I occasionally use Chat GPT, and I do so with tremendous trepidation. I do not like what it learns about me when I ask it for things. I do not like the humanoid quality of its responses. I do not like that it makes assumptions and intuitive leaps. I do not like the image, in my head, of all the resources it’s depleting just to give me a list of books that meet a series of very specific requirements.

At a work event for my husband’s practice, some of his colleagues were discussing AI and its various applications in the medical field. Providers ask AI to summarize patient visits, which can optimize their time doing paperwork and allow them to interact with patient instead of focusing on their computers. Surgeons operate robotic tools remotely. AI can help spot pre-cancerous polyps in endoscopy videos.   

Requests for my freelance work have declined in recent years. Occasionally, I decide that I want to earn more money and I look for jobs. Usually, my searches are for remote positions because I dislike wearing real clothes any more than absolutely necessary. My entire career has been in writing adjacent fields: editing, copywriting, content creation. Editing and writing are what I love to do; they are my primary skills. The job search engines turned up posting after posting after posting for various methods of training AI to edit and write.

(I use Google and Gmail every day. I click on words in my Kindle and in online content to see their definitions. I employ spellcheck in Word.)  

Two men at my neighbor’s barbecue chatted about their use of AI at work. One uses it to generate marketing copy. The other uses it to write emails to customers. They agreed that AI is so much cheaper and easier and more efficient than hiring an expert to do those tasks. They noted that the output isn’t quite as good. They each shrugged.

I disabled the predictive text function on my phone. I disabled Gemini in my Gmail accounts. I refuse to look at the AI Overview in my Google search results. I feel principled and righteous. I feel irritated because I have to do so much scrolling to find a reputable source for my inquiries and I misspell so many words when I text and I overlook emails from my mom because my inbox is so clotted with advertisements.

One of my writing friends recently told me that she was quitting ChatGPT cold turkey. She had been using it to help her brainstorm ideas, refine sentences, identify plot holes… but she’d been horrified by the number of articles she’d been reading about AI use in the publishing industry. She also felt her brain wasn’t working as quickly or as deftly as it had before she’d started using AI.

(Apple Maps tells me how to get to the airport and friends’ houses and medical offices. Siri tells me what to expect from the day’s weather. Presumably nearly every airplane I’ve ever been on utilizes autopilot.)

I worry about: My lack of marketable skills. The various ways AI might impact my child’s future: her career prospects, her critical thinking skills, her mental health. The longterm effects of the systematic mutilation of our environment. Doctors relying on AI to the point of missing symptoms or eroding their own skills. Deepfakes and AI scams and chatbot-fueled psychosis.

A professor friend of mine laments the increase of AI-generated work among her students. She uses AI to pinpoint whether an assignment has been completed using AI.

Sometimes I think that it’s shortsighted and stubborn to resist a technology that could offer real improvements in efficiency and scope of knowledge. Sometimes I feel like a side character in a dystopian story, being propelled inexorably toward the collapse of humanity.  

(Netflix recommends shows I might like. Google Lens helps me identify plants, and Merlin Bird ID recognizes the birds I’m listening to. Shazam tells me which song is playing on my Apple playlist of “summer songs.” My phone’s Clean Up tool removes blemishes from my photos. A robot vacuums my floors and another robot cleans my pool.)

Elevator operators, lamplighters, crossing sweepers, linotype operators, travel agents, video store clerks. I’m not the first person whose career prospects have dwindled or disappeared due to technological innovation. I won’t be the last.

There’s nothing new I can add to the conversation. There’s SO MUCH about AI I don’t know and haven’t considered. But it’s something I think about all the time and it’s something that has insinuated itself into all of our lives.

I don’t know if I can be against AI when I use it so frequently in everyday life. But I certainly don’t feel good about AI. Outsourcing our critical thinking to AI can lead to faulty conclusions (“cognitive surrender”) and stunt our capacity for analytical reasoning (“cognitive offloading”). Generative AI models and the data centers used to power them have clear, measurable environmental consequences (one estimate I read says the same query on ChatGPT uses five times the energy than a web search). There are the slippery moral, ethical, and philosophical issues of AI consciousness (or not). But AI can also increase efficiency, automate daily routines, facilitate learning, summarize and analyze vast amounts of data, and and and and.

I don’t want to contribute to the depletion of our water sources, the impairment of our ability to think, the decline of civilization. I don’t want to be left behind.

(My phone labels unknown numbers as potential spam. Canva’s AI tool alters graphics to my specifications. Google AI Mode generates a list of articles about AI.)

Some AI use may be “better” than others. But where’s the line?

I would be so very interested to hear about your thoughts regarding and experiences with AI. Do you use it at work? In your personal life? What worries you or excites you the most? This is a judgment-free zone; I feel like we are all grappling with how and when and why and at what cost.

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Cat Questions

Did you know that my tiny baby kitten is now an enormous ADULT CAT?


Because he is a fancy hypoallergenic purebred cat, we know the exact date of his birthday, and it was this past week.

We got him a hat and a bandana, neither of which he enjoyed. But he seems to feel quite dapper in the bowtie.

We got him a present. He LOVES it.

In his honor, I thought I would devote a post to some pressing cat questions. Questions that you have asked about this particular cat, and questions I have about cat parenting.

Is this cat’s name Lenny or Leo?

The answer to this question is yes. Okay, that’s not helpful. The real answer is, his name is Leo in my household and at the vet, but his name is Lenny in my heart. I lobbied so hard to call him Lenny, but I was overruled by my husband and child. Thus, he goes by Leo at home (Or Leo-cat. Or Mr. Fluffy Pants.). But I feel so much glee that so many blog readers continue to refer to him as Lenny.  It is a delight that my much-longed-for name persists here in the digital world. Julie, in particular, reminds me that she thinks of Lenny Kravitz, and that brings me a lot of joy because I am pretty my cat thinks that his human form would bear strong resemblance to this:

In my opinion, he often shares more similarities with this other beloved if fictional Lenny:

Do you really bathe your cat?

I have mentioned several times that I bathe my cat, and this is often met with perplexity. Cats are, after all, self-cleaning. My cat demonstrates his own personal grooming activities multiple times per day, sometimes in a slightly insulting manner right after one of us has pet him.

Nonetheless, I bathe him approximately once a month, using water and original Dawn. I do this for three reasons, in no particular priority: 1. To get/keep him accustomed to being bathed, so that it isn’t traumatic to either of us. 2. To address occasional hygienic issues that affect the pantaloons area. 3. To manage the tendency of his fur to become, over time, slightly greasy – a result of his diet or, more likely, the incessant petting by hands that may or may not have food residue on them.

I used to bathe him in the bathtub, but it hurts my back. So I have begun to give him a shower. He doesn’t seem to mind the water. I hold him and the only time he seems slightly perturbed is when I lather him. He lets me know he is perturbed by gently increasing his grip on my shoulders and mewing plaintively a few times.

He is obsessed with the shower. Loves to get in it, loves to catch drips from the shower head, loves to lie outside of it on the bath math, loves to chase water droplets on the shower doors.


I blow dry him with a hair dryer that I prop up on books and point at where I am holding him on my lap and combing him. He seems to enjoy that part of the process. This system works, but it’s not ideal. Sometimes I daydream about getting a fancy pet blow dryer, like this one. There’s also this drying box that is WAY too expensive but that doesn’t stop me from looking at it. This one is more in my price range, and it’s also a brush.

Now I have some questions for you.

Where does all the FUR come from?

Lenny is a Siberian, and he has luxurious medium-length fur. I brush him at least once daily. AT LEAST ONCE. I vacuum at least once daily as well. And yet, every time I turn around, or every time the cat moves from one location to another, a tumbleweed of fur trundles lackadaisically across the floor. HOW? And also WHY?

The cat breeder warned me that Lenny would have two shedding seasons each year: spring and then fall. So far, neither season has ended. Shedding season appears to take place all year long. I do not like it.

Is there a special brush I should be using? I have two combs and this brush (which Leo does not like) and there are too many options for me to choose from; I find it overwhelming.

How much should I be feeding the cat?

As a reader of this blog, you are well aware of how much I fret about feeding my human child, right? Well, I worry about the cat’s food intake EVEN MORE. I find the entire feeding situation completely impossible. Everything I read (and also the cat breeder) said that we should give our cat both wet and dry food. Wet because his breed and/or sex has a propensity for developing crystals in the urinary tract, which can be dangerous and potentially fatal; the extra moisture in the wet food helps ensure he stays hydrated, which is one way to prevent the crystals from forming. Dry because it can help his teeth stay strong, and also because you can leave dry food out longer than you can the wet food.

Severely malnourished and also STARVING.


All the food containers say how much you should be giving your cat. There are tons of websites that offer guidance about how many calories a cat should consume, based on age and weight and indoor/outdoor status. And yet I still feel like I have NO IDEA. Sometimes he will scarf down a whole can of food. Other times he will barely nibble at it. Some days I go to refill his dry food and it’s all gone, other days he has hardly touched it. Sometimes he shows a clear preference for one flavor of cat food over another. Other days, he will turn up his nose at his favorite flavor or gobble up the entire plate of his least preferred flavor. He seems to have regular bathroom habits. He seems to be active and happy. He seems to be a fine weight and shape. Is he getting enough calories or not? Is he malnourished? Is he overweight? Does he need more flavor variety? Does he need less flavor variety? Am I leaving out too much dry food?

What do cat owners REALLY DO about the litter box?

The litter we use says 1) fill clean, dry litter box with 3” to 4” of litter; 2) scoop waste twice daily and refill box as necessary; and 3) replace entire box once a month. The litter website also says that we should replace the entire litter box every six to twelve months.

Is this what we’re doing, cat owners? Are we cleaning out and replacing all the litter every month? Are we replacing the entire litter box every six to twelve months, and, if so, is that only plastic litter boxes (which is what we have) or does that apply to stainless steel ones as well? I “scooped waste twice daily” for the first couple of months, but the cat tends to fulfill the majority of his litter box needs at night, so it seemed pointless and now I do it once a day.

WHAT ARE YOU SAYING?

My particular cat has not been very vocal. His mews have been few and far between. The most regular vocalization he has is when he welcomes us home. He sits on the kitchen side of the closed laundry room door and when we open it, he stretches and greets us with a little “mrmrmr!” Although… he does seem to be exercising his voice more frequently now that he’s getting older. It’s still rare enough, though, that any time he mews, his humans will react with extreme sympathy: “What buddy? What is it? Are you okay?” Sometimes it seems like he’s asking where we are. Sometimes it seems like he’s expressing a complaint. But most of the time, I have no idea what he’s trying to tell me.

What I am trying to tell you is of UTMOST IMPORTANCE.

Is this like having a human child, who starts out with grunts and then moves on to babbling and then to words or word-stand-ins? Will I eventually understand exactly what he wants, or are we always destined to stare uncomprehendingly into one another’s eyes?

Why are your pants so fluffy?!?!

A question for the ages.

I really hope you have some answers, Internet. But please share any cat questions – about my specific cat or cats in general – as well. I certainly won’t be able to answer an of them, but I would of course fret easily about any and all things that haven’t yet caught my attention.

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Grocery Report and Dinners This Week

Something happened today that has never happened before: Carla got a ride home from school with a neighbor. 

(I will pause here to note that I have extreme anxiety about my child traveling in cars with anyone besides a few specific people. Outside of school bus drivers – shudder [and now I feel like I need an aside inside my aside to clarify that I think school bus drivers are saints, and my shudder is not toward them but towards the idea of complete strangers driving a seatbelt-free vehicle full of children on a freeway] – and the occasional hotel shuttle driver, Carla has ridden with a literal handful of drivers. So this was A Big Deal in many ways.) 

I took this glorious opportunity to avoid the school pickup drive and… went to the grocery store. I do know how to live it up, don’t I? It was one of those times when I just needed Two Things For Tonight’s Dinner. I wanted to use up the leftover goat cheese from yesterday’s frittata (which was easy and delicious; the only thing I might change going forward is either choosing a more flavorful sausage or omitting the sausage entirely, because it was undetectable) and the only thing I could think of was a salad. But I wanted blueberries for the salad and also we had no lettuce. So! I figured I could breeze in and get those two things and then breeze out. 

It never works out that way, does it? Have you ever gone into the grocery store, intending to buy only X items, and left with only X items? If so, HOW????? Once I was inside the grocery store, I decided this was IT. I was not going to go to the store again. I went twice last week, plus I went to Costco, and that was too much. So I figured I better on-the-fly come up with a meal plan for the week. 

Let’s see. We have all the ingredients for the meal I planned to make for Mother’s Day dinner, and then decided against in favor of takeout Mexican food. My husband recently expressed a desire for Southwest Salad, and I’m plenty happy doing two salads in a week. I could go for a stir fry. And… something else vegetable-y. 

Here’s what I ended up with.

Dinners for the Week of May 12-18

  • Slow Cooker Shredded Beef Ragu: All the ingredients are in my fridge right now (Well. The pappardelle is in the cupboard. You know what I mean.) because I was hung ho about making this for Mother’s Day and then when it came time to make it… I did not want to cook dinner.
  • Southwest Salad: I make this with chicken for my husband, salmon for myself.
  • Sheet Pan Veggie Shawarma: I have some cilantro from something last week just languishing in the fridge. Hopefully it will survive long enough for me to make it into this sauce.
  • Szechuan Stir Fry: I got zucchini and bell peppers for this stir fry, and I have some broccoli in the fridge I can throw in as well.

Wow. All of my meals start with S this week. That’s fun. (Is it?)

Okay, back to my riveting grocery store experience.

I was really fortunate in that a) I had a lot of the non-perishable ingredients for these meals already and b) I didn’t need a ton in the way of “staples.” But I still bought two bags worth of groceries, for a total of $85.60. That’s probably about half of what I typically spend – maybe even less than half – but it feels like an impossibly small haul of food for that amount, doesn’t it???

The single most expensive item in my cart today was a bag of frozen Italian meatballs for $9.49. This is one of the items of questionable nutrition my child will eat, and we were out. Chicken was next most expensive at $8.09 for three boneless skinless breasts, approximately 1/3 of a pound each. 

The third most expensive item, at $7.99, was the pint of blueberries I bought. I cannot help it; I am addicted to these blueberries. They are enormous and so sweet. I just cannot get enough of them. Of course, they last about five minutes in my home. But it is WORTH IT. 

The dairy stuff we get is super expensive, and we go through it so fast. We drink Fairlife milk ($5.49 for 52 oz) because it supposedly is kinder on some people’s digestive systems, and some of those people live in my house. We eat Fage yogurt ($6.99 for 32 oz) like it’s the fountain of youth because it is so versatile and so high in protein. 

I also got three individual Siggi’s yogurts ($1.00 apiece, on sale) and a package of honey roasted pecans for tonight’s salad ($3.99, yeesh), but the entire rest of my shopping cart was produce. I feel pretty good about that. Which is not to say that I feel BAD when my cart is full of canned beans and pasta and cereal and other packaged food. I just felt like I really overshot my “Two Things” plan, and at least I impulse bought a bunch of veggies, right???

Of course, there was no corn on the cob for the Southwest Salad, and who knows if the two heads of lettuce I got for tonight’s salad will leave enough lettuce for the second salad. So clearly I need to return to the grocery store despite my promises to myself. 

How much do you want to bet I leave with just the corn and the lettuce????