Artificial Intelligence? In Terminator 2: Judgement Day the T-101 model has a telephone conversation with the T-1000, both of them pretending to be someone else. Arnold does a spot on John Conner impression and outwits the more advanced T-1000 who doesn’t know the name of the family pet. Artificial Intelligence in the Terminator franchise, like The Matrix and I, Robot, has advanced to a level that threatens the existence of humanity. Most of the AI we see today is used to make creepy near-photo realistic pictures that are given away by the fact it doesn’t know how many fingers human beings have on each hand. Have you had AI offer to write for you? AI makes claims that it can boost productivity by creating blog posts and even generate social media buzz by posting to social media on your behalf. The same software that thinks people have between 8 and 12 fingers on one hand wants to write my blog posts. If you read the story above you probably recognize Hulk Hogan in both pictures. Those are real images featuring a fan that met Hogan twice, once as a kid and then recreated the photo years later as an adult. That’s not his son, he is not a computer geek as far as we know, and Hogan’s real first name is Terry. The AI simply made up a fake story but had no idea Hulk Hogan is a celebrity that the vast majority of Americans would recognize whether fans of wrestling or not. It can write words and sentences but just like the images there is always a tell. Maybe AI is not as dangerous as dystopian sci-fi movies led us to believe.

Or maybe that’s what the AI wants us to think.

A long day – The summer solstice was last week and you probably know that June 21 was the longest day of the year, clocking in around 15 hours and 8 minutes of “daytime.” You would probably think the earliest sunrise and latest sunset were on that date as well. It makes sense, that’s how you get the longest day, right? Oddly enough that is not right. The earliest sunrise is actually a few days before the summer solstice each year, and the latest sunset is a few days after. Similarly the latest sunrise in December occurs days before the winter solstice and the earliest sunset a few days after. That’s because in nature not everything is uniformly shaped. The earth is not a perfect sphere but a little wider around the center. Its orbit around the sun is not a perfect circle so it moves faster when closer to the sun and a little slower when farther away. According to our clocks, each day is exactly 86,400 seconds long but an apparent day, how long each day is by observation of the earth’s movement, can vary by a few minutes each way. Our solar calendar is imperfect and requires adjustment, I.e. leap day. If you’re a nerd like me – I’ve never met Hulk Hogan – you might enjoy this article via Time and Date that explains the equation of time.

The headline said controversial menu change. It wasn’t total clickbait, just slightly misleading to draw interest. The change will not be any items added or removed but a 2.5 to 3% increase in the prices on the menu. A common belief lately is that it costs less to eat out than to buy groceries and eat at home but think about it; restaurants have to buy groceries, then pay cook and wait staff, then still have the overhead expenses of running a business. Olive Garden believes their menus have been under priced for the past five years or so. I will continue to share the same advice that I have for a while now: Fast food is always the same price. A Whopper combo meal from Burger King will be the same price at lunch on Tuesday as dinner Friday evening. But sit down, full service restaurants, like Olive Garden and Longhorn’s, often have a Mon – Fri lunch menu that is much cheaper than evenings and weekends. Chinese buffets and Mexican restaurants are cheaper at lunch during the week. These deals are often as good as or better than fast food between the hours of 11 AM and 2 PM when you consider what you are getting for the price.

90 degrees? That’s not so bad. That’s actually cooler than it has been over the past several days. It’s the month of June in the state of Georgia. Someone claimed the 100 degrees we had one day this past week was a record in our town. I found that hard to believe but also hard to research. Here’s a couple of facts that I did discover: The highest temp ever recorded in the city of Atlanta was 106, a record set in June of 2012. I remember that summer. We had recently moved back to Georgia from Kentucky and it was a scorcher. I was working out in the yard each day and could only stay out until lunch. By noon it was hitting triple digits on the daily. On June 30, 2012, Atlanta recorded an all time record high of 106° F. That was the single hottest day but there are other dates of note. Beginning on July 17, 1980, there were three days in a row the temp hit 105. I do not remember that personally but I can tell you that air conditioning was more of a luxury then than the necessity is considered now and my parents’ house did not have any.

Sometimes it’s hard to tell if an image should be included in the Satur-deja Vu or the next Happy Monday. This is a thing that recently happened so I’ll just leave it here without comment.

This week on The Master’s Table I both did and did not want to say something about the Ten Commandments law passed in Louisiana. So I tried to copy and paste some thoughtful insights written by Jimmy Humphrey and then I went ahead and said some things anyway.

I am trying hard to not post anything about the election. If you care then you watched the debate and you already know. If you don’t care then you don’t want to read what I would have to say. I could make an exception after the national conventions this summer but so far I am staying the course.