Fire Ant Flickers (#22)

Howdy, and welcome to another exciting* and informative* edition of Fire Ant Flickers. I detected a certain degree of insouciance toward my last post, and I’m beginning to think that perhaps some of you don’t share my infatuation — strictly intellectual, of course — with lizards. I’ve resolved not to take that personally, although I can’t speak on behalf of our Texas spiny lizard (the species tends toward overly dramatic self-importance), and I’ll try to do a better job of slaking your apparent thirst for weightier content*.

You’re no doubt aware that today is a triple threat kind of day as far as observances go: it’s National Fajita Day, National Ice Cream Pie Day, and National Pinot Noir Day, according to the anonymous gnomes who publish the National Day Calendar. I’ve got no quibble with the first two, but, seriously, who decided that National Tequila Day would not be paired with National Fajita Day? If you’re ordering a Pinot Noir to go with your beef fajitas, I suggest you seek therapy.

*Your mileage may vary; void where prohibited.

Let’s stumble along, shall we?

Is it hot where you are? Based on the arm-waving of the TV meteorologists, I suspect you’re either dealing with extremely high temperatures or extremely high water levels (i.e., flooding). I’ll take the former over the latter any day, but I have to admit that when I see readings like those I saw yesterday on the wall-mounted thermometer in our garage (see below), it’s an uncomfortable dilemma.

Granted, the outdoor temperature is based on the reading of the sensor that’s adjacent to our west-facing metal garage door, but that shouldn’t lessen the ridiculousness of the situation.

Did you hear about the US citizen who has been indicted on a charge of obstruction (a felony) for using a “duress passcode” to wipe his phone before customs officers in the Atlanta airport could view it? I’m not going to debate the legal issues surrounding the incident — there are several and they are significant — although I’ve read one argument that had he wiped his phone prior to entering the customs area, it would not have constituted a potential crime. Rather, I’m a bit intrigued by the concept of having an app that would allow you to completely delete your phone’s content with a simple (I assume) code.

According to the report, the person was using an open-source operating system called GrapheneOS on his Android phone. It allows the user to create an alternate passcode to the one that simply unlocks the phone. The alternate code is designed to protect the phone’s content from theft when the user is forced against his will to unlock the device. It’s a rather draconian option, but one can easily conjure up a case where it would be useful.

Note that Apple doesn’t allow the installation of a duress passcode, either natively in its operating systems or via 3rd-party apps. Apple’s iOS does provide the option of wiping the device after ten incorrect attempts to unlock it, and individual apps can include their own duress passcode equivalents that will erase data related solely to those apps.

BTW, the case against the man is still pending. I’ll be interested to see how it’s resolved.

A few weeks ago I became dangerously addicted to a new pastry served up by the bakery tempters at H-E-B: the weirdly-named Aphrodite Lemon Blueberry Toga Cookie.

The toga is produced by Aphrodite Divine Confections in its Garland, Texas, facility. It’s best described as a glaze-drizzled cookie/scone hybrid, but with a cream cheese filling, the flavor of which depends on which of the five varieties you’re devouring. Pictured below is a lemon-blueberry toga; the cream cheese filling is mildly lemon flavored.

These pastries are for the serious consumer; a serving is 1/2 cookie (yeah, riiiiggght) and packs 180 calories…but you also get 2 grams of protein so it’s actually good for you!

I’ve tried the lemon-blueberry and the cinnamon togas, and I hereby pronounce them delicious. They may not be available in your area; if not, I offer sincere condolences.

I’ll leave you with this report from a week ago: a high school football player in Arkansas practiced for an hour before he realized that there was something besides his head inside his helmet. It turned out to be a venomous cottonmouth (aka water moccasin).

I understand that Hollywood is already working on a movie script based on this event. Working title: Snakes On A Brain. [sorry/notsorry]

Postscript: A.I. or No?

After I finished writing this post, I submitted it to ChatGPT and asked it to review and offer feedback. Here’s the exact prompt I used:

Hello, again! I’d like to try an experiment, if you’re game. If I upload a PDF of a pending blog post, would you be able to read it, and then offer suggestions, corrections, or observations, based on what you’ve learned about me and my style (whatever that may be)? I have a special motivation for this, which I’ll share if we get farther down this road.

ChatGPT accepted the assignment, so I copied the post — text and graphics, as you see it here — into a PDF document and uploaded it with the following additional prompt:

OK, here’s the PDF. Now, keep in mind that this post is not intended to be anything other than a series of random observations; there’s no unifying theme (hence the “Flickers” title). That might help you in your review.

ChatGPT did a thorough job of analyzing what I wrote and offered a handful of suggestions. Several were corrections of typos; I’m pretty sure I would have caught them had I waited to submit a final version for review, but I still appreciated the offerings. The most consequential suggestion was one about the entry on the use of a phone’s duress passcode at the Atlanta airport that has resulted in legal charges against the owner of the phone. My initial comment on the issue implied that I was more certain of the legal implications than I had any standing to be. As a result, I rewrote one sentence to be less definite about that implication.

Why bother telling you this? I strongly believe that A.I. can be a useful tool for writers, as long as it’s not used for, you know, the actual writing. And I also am commited to disclosing all instances where I’ve used A.I., whether it’s to generate an image, or act as an editor. In this case, the editorial change as a result of ChatGPT’s review was minor and doesn’t need specific attribution, but I wanted you to know that I used the tool to make the post more accurate and factual.

Also, you can’t blame ChatGPT for anything else you read here. It’s all mine. Again…sorry/notsorry.