Thank you for reading and subscribing!
See below for today's post—then keep scrolling, for poems, stories and cartoons from the last week…
Air Mail Contrarian Cartoon
Professional naysayers have had a very busy time during the pandemic. One wonders if they could use a break from it all.
Below: A cartoon from last week’s Air Mail:
New Yorker Gaslighting Cartoon / Bananas
The starchy plantain is often described as a “cooking banana.” If it were me, I’d be a little offended by that. I’d want to be defined in my own right, not merely in reference to my more media-friendly cousin.
Let’s redress the balance. Let’s flip the script. Let’s describe bananas with reference to other things, for a change:
Nature’s boomerang
Fun gun
Monkey’s best bud
Strange potato
Bart Simpson’s arm
Loaf of emojis
Fruit cocoon
Shoe of the beach-elf
Moon egg
Cheese torpedo
We did it!
Below: A New Yorker cartoon from 2018:
(Signed prints available here)
Pasta Pete
He was born with a head like a tubular pasta
Cannelloni
They named him Pete
As a child, he loved to drink milkshakes
A human straw
Enough calcium
Pete’s parents sent him to boarding school
He hated it
Ran into the hills
Now he’s sucking up fish from the brook
Built a cabin
Living his best life
by Tom Chitty
Below: Pete and friend.
Are you a computer?
In the relatively near future, you’ll be able to chat with a computer—without knowing it's a computer. I don’t mean automated-helpline type stuff. I mean, comparing hobbies and sharing your feelings about Strasbourg.
The best way to test if your friend is fake is to focus on very specific things. You can't ask a computer if they have feet and expect to trip them up. Too easy. No, you need to ask what it feels like to have feet. To be cutting one’s toe nails, and to see one fly off under a cabinet, or disappear into the bathroom rug.
A human will reference their guilt or shame. A computer will say it tracked the arc of the stray nail, and then incinerated the dirty outlaw with a laser eyeball.
If you ask a ‘virtual brain’ their favourite band, they will, of course, say Kraftwerk—another easy question. Try asking them what they imagine Elvis smelled like, or get them to draw Adele’s face on an egg.
I’m not saying computers won’t be able to perform these more nuanced tasks; but it will take them a couple of seconds, and they’ll make tell-tale beeping noises, as they process their ‘thoughts’—that's all the proof you need! Checkmate!
NB: If you’ve heard some beeping noises while reading the information above, then you’re probably a computer.
Below: Robot’s ‘R’ Us.