Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller for July 24, 2023

Clearly not from Amazon if delivery was swift

Alexa et al. totally creeps me out, and I don’t even have one. Never will, either.

My amazon order is spread along the Rail Road tracks in California.

“Hello Alexa, I would like to order world peace”

Start..?

I set it up so I can tell Google to turn my bedroom light on and off. The default name for the plug was “plug”, so I kept that. In the middle of the night answered the call of the bladder. I told Google “Hey Google plug on”. When I had done my business and went back to bed, I said “Hey Google plug off.” Google replied “I’m sorry you feel that way, if you have any complaints take it up with Google administrators.” I changed the name of the plug.

(sung) “I always know that…Al-exa’s waaaaat-ching meeeeeeeeeeeee!” ;D

We had some glitch in the Matrix here in Vegas yesterday. I couldn’t get the computer mouse to work and then I couldn’t get Alexa to turn off the music. I finally unplugged both for about ten minutes. The mouse worked fine, but Alexa wouldn’t answer me. I can only assume she was angry with me.

The super-fast delivery is more of sci-fi-type cartoon…

maybe she ordered it Before she asked him and then asked him when she knew the delivery driver was almost to his door haha

Fish oil? I’ve never heard of a squeaky fish.

With Amazon, one gets to pick the day to, according to the online choices, a day that saves trips with the implication that one also saves fuel, wear and tear on driver and vehicle, etc. So you set your schedule to look for the goodies. You get an email 2 days earlier than scheduled saying the thing is on the doorstep. Or they tell you it won’t arrive for a week or more, then there are almost daily emails moving delivery closer than scheduled. Sometimes very confusing.

But the fastest reply is the one you get saying your return was accepted and your account credited before you arrived home from the return center. That one I like.

In keeping up my curmudgeon badge, I will add that, unless circumstance or health require it, I will never have a digital snoop in my presence. Bad enough that sites are continually cluttering the screen with what they decide I must be of interested to me based on my choices. Google news offered users a chance to set up the page the way they wanted it then scrambled it again with junk like For You, Fact Check, Sources, and Beyond the Front Page, none of which I read or use. Add the repetition of articles that may be a week or more old and you get something that should only be used for the bottoms of digital bird cages and litter boxes.

“Ding, ding, ding, dong.” Sounds like the first notes of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony. Ironically, it’s also the letter V in Morse Code and V is the Roman numeral for 5. It was also used in World War 2 for “victory.”

My wife uses her maiden name but the web has figured out we’re related, so I get ads suggesting I “might be interested” in things she’s researched or bought. I realize it’s not difficult to associate us, particularly given that we have the same delivery address, but it’s still annoying. I’ve turned off the microphone and targeted advertising on both of our laptops and refuse to have Alexa, etc., in our home, but clearly someone somehow is still listening. Things we’ve just discussed, and not typed into our computers at all, start appearing in our ads. And they appear quickly!

2001?

What’s Amazon gonna do with all those satellites?

I only know one person who had Alexa, she used it for selecting music. Last time I visited, it was unplugged.

hey alexa, turn off

A newspaper? I think that’s what it is. Never saw one, but Grandpa used to talk about them.

I get the news through my neural link.

GERSPLAAT! I will obey! I will obey!

Gotta be careful and not upset the thought monitor.

It’s come to this; the highlight of our lives is ordering stuff online

What’s really creepy is Alexa is sending all of his personal information to China and his bank accounts and credit card numbers to Ghana. Tru dat.

Did anyone see the “Pickles” comic for today? I think it applies to this (todays) comic.

It’s no “Baby Shoes, never worn” but: “Alexa, sing Happy Birthday”

Every new devise I turn off location, microphone, camera, history and java scripts to all apps – yet if I accidentally swipe up the Google app STILL launches with a microphone button. The buggers are more persistent than mosquito trapped in the house.

Alexa, please tell Amazon Prime to stop tricking people into ordering expensive Prime Music subscriptions.

Why is he ordering fish oil supplements when he lives in a seafood hub?

I learned to drive on my mom’s 1960 VW and owned nothing but stick shift cars for long time but when I got into my late 30s I got tired of the Los Angeles rush hour traffic and bought a car with an automatic transmission with a ‘shift kit’. The car I have now has an automatic trans with a side gate so I can manually upshift or downshift, reminds me of going to the SCCA races in my younger days.

So unrealistic. He’d actually have to say “Alexa, what is it?” (the “wake” word going first). .

Alexa and Siri. Asked questions all the time, asked for suggestions , decision making, in a vast network of devices, listening to conversations. How long do you think it’s going to be before they become self aware. SYFY, I know but do wonder about.

(Heard on NPR a few years ago) A pastor was preaching about the lack of human contact in modern life. “We don’t even go to the store any more. We just say ’, order me 400 rolls of toilet paper.” One of his homebound parishioners heard him on live stream. So did her smart speaker. A smart speaker of the brand he named …

“We have what you need.”

Efficient, but creepy.