A mini-post salad

HI!

I'm The Noah. This *gestures around my blog* is my blog.

I write a lot of blog posts nobody reads because my blog is rubbish, and even more blog posts that nobody reads because I don't finish them or finish them and don't post them.

I want to try a few of the topics that felt like they were worth a full blog post but turned out to be like a paragraph, so this one's going to be a quilt of little mini blog post topics. A blog hodgepodge of sorts. A cocktail of sorts. An agglomeration of sorts. A little blog post salad for your reading eyes to taste. 

Feel free to read all, some, or none of them depending on whether the titles tickle your fancy. My fancy was certainly wouldn't be tickled by any of them, so there's no judgement from me if you skip a few.

Is this a salad? What is meaning?

POST 1: Lucid Dreams by juice wrld with no o isn't. about lucid dreaming.

So, I have a blog post about my super-duper useful and important theory that Taylor Swift is an avid lucid dreamer (someone who regularly realized they are dreaming WHILE they are dreaming and then doesn't immediately wake up). I'll link to that post if you haven't read it, even though no one is going to read this one... here.

Anyway my theory about Juice wrld with no o is the exact opposite. He sings about lucid dreaming. His biggest song is called Lucid Dreams. But I'm not convinced he knows what a lucid dream is. He describes his dream as "where I can't move a thing ... in my bed" and goes on to talk about thinking of his girl and seeing her shadows in his room. THAT is a clear description of Sleep Paralysis.

Sleep Paralysis is an affliction that like a quarter of people have I think (I haven't checked) where sometimes your brain wakes up about a minute before your body so you just lie in bed paralyzed. Personally, when I wake up and get paralyzed I just  freak out for a while trying to move and often think other people are in the room, which is commonly reported by people with Sleep Paralysis. Another thing people report is seeing shadowy figures in their room "I still see your shadows in my room". 

Yeah that's definitely Sleep Paralysis. Totally not a lucid dream, but I can understand how you got the two confused and no one corrected you until you released the song.

Aaaaaaand that's the whole theory. See why I didn't make that into a post, because it's pointless. No one cares that sometimes I can't move when I wake up. Nothing matters.

POST 2: AI isn’t going to take all customer service jobs for a good while.

Odd 1s Out's song Life is Fun is really fun. Look it up.

There’s a common belief that robots are going to take all our jobs in the very near future, and that customer service jobs will be the first to go but… I don’t know.

First of all, customer service jobs like fast food and retail are pretty cheap. It’s mostly teenagers working these jobs and they are generally willing to work for $7-$10 an hour, which means the robot that replaces them has got to be super cheap to be worth the investment.

Second of all, taking customers orders is actually not as easy as people think because while about half of people are probably able to order a fast food meal exactly the way they want it, the other half would cause problems. In my work in fast food I found that about a third of all customers who don’t order their meal exactly the way it is on the menu give too little information and then wait for you to ask them questions.

“Hi. I’d like a sandwich.”

“………. Um. Which one?”

“The number one with none of the gross stuff on it.”

“We’re going to be here a while aren’t we?”

A third of customers give extra information

“I’d like a sandwich. My brother hates onions.”

“Do you not want onions on the sandwich?”

“No. I want onions. I like them I’m just saying my brother doesn’t.”

“… fair enough.”

(Yes this is a real conversation that I’ve had and I swear I had conversations like it every single day I worked in fast food for two full years)

And a third of customers give incorrect information like ordering chicken poppers at subway or a Big Mac at Wendy’s.

I just don’t think even with AI and machine learning that computers will be equipped to help customers who don’t know how to order order what they really want.

Third of all, I just had the two points. That’s all. No social implications. No real predictions about what an AI explosions could do to our society. Yeah, this one isn’t blog post material either.

POST 3:  Google autocomplete treats the word "Islam" weird.

When I space out I sometimes just start typing things into Google, and I realized that Google would autocomplete sentences about Christianity into positive, negative, or neutral thoughts. And so I started trying different things.

“Why is Christianity so…” suggests among other things “diverse,” “popular,” and “depressing.”

Then I realized that I couldn’t get Google to autocomplete ANYTHING negative about Islam or Muslims, which is WEIRD because I know a lot of stupid people are all Googling “why is islam violent” and misunderstandings about what causes terrorism and stuff like that just as much as people are Googling that Christianity is “hard” and “depressing” and all that. But I can’t get Google to say ANYTHING negative about Islam, because I guess Islam is considered a race?

I got it to say “Why is Buddhism so confusing” “Why is Catholicism so strict/so scary” and “are chick fil a Mormon” whatever that means.

I understand that they don't want anything in their autocomplete that some clickbait journalist could put in a headline with the words “GoOgLe wAnTs yOu tO SeaRch FoR” I get it. But it certainly seems like Google treats Islam differently than the other religions, which either says something about Google or something about our society… or it says nothing at all. I don’t feel like I know enough about how Google works to draw any conclusions about this, but it’s just a random observation I stumbled onto. You can play around with it if you want, and if you do, let me know what you find.

This has been fun for me. And that's all that matters to me. I hope you enjoyed this horrible smorgasbord of half-baked theories and thoughts. Be sure to comment if you want more... or less. All opinions are welcome I guess.

I'm The Noah.

Thanks for reading.

Feel free to bookmark the page if you love it or whatever.

BYE!