{"id":14473,"date":"2024-11-08T11:40:19","date_gmt":"2024-11-08T17:40:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/?p=14473"},"modified":"2024-11-23T12:50:42","modified_gmt":"2024-11-23T18:50:42","slug":"happy-22nd-blogiversary-to-the-fire-ant-gazette","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/2024\/11\/08\/happy-22nd-blogiversary-to-the-fire-ant-gazette\/","title":{"rendered":"Happy 22nd Blogiversary to\u00a0The Fire Ant Gazette!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Twenty-two years ago, I started this little experiment on the internet, and here we are still. Who knew? Like any stubborn fire ant,&nbsp;<em>The Fire Ant Gazette<\/em>&nbsp;has somehow refused to die. We&#8217;ve survived countless fads, shifting platforms, and way too many instances of \u201cHey, you should probably update your site.\u201d (Oops!)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<p>Over the years, I\u2019ve waxed poetic, ranted, and probably shared way too much information, but you know what? You stuck around, and that says something about either your resilience or your poor taste in entertainment. Either way, I\u2019m grateful. We\u2019ve been through a lot together\u2014posts that I thought were brilliant, and others that&#8230; well, let&#8217;s just say they were more like filler on a lazy day. And through it all, this blog has been my little corner to overshare and under-think.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So here\u2019s to 22 years of posts, friends, and the occasional troll! Thanks for reading, for commenting, and for being the reason I keep doing this. I promise there\u2019s more to come, although I make no guarantees about quality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>And for the record: this post was expertly crafted with the help* of a very clever AI assistant who totally gets my sense of humor.<\/strong> [<em>Ed. Keep it up, smart guy, and you&#8217;ll find yourself permanently sidelined in favor of a soulless machine. We don&#8217;t pay you to dink around with ChatGPT while strategizing on how to cheat at pickleball because you&#8217;re a lousy player.<\/em>] [<em>Me. Wow. Lighten up, Francis. And what&#8217;s this &#8220;pay&#8221; thing of which you speak?<\/em>]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"108\" height=\"15\" src=\"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/divider.gif\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-13075\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"smaller\">*OK, Mr. (or MS. &#8212; I&#8217;m never really sure) AI is being too modest. This <em>entire post<\/em> was generated by ChatGPT, other than the editorializing at the end. The prompt included a request to replicate my writing style (along with the 22nd birthday thing), but otherwise, I gave it free rein. I confess that the results are sort of scary. Also, I hate the word &#8220;blogiversary,&#8221; so there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s the Gazette&#8217;s 22nd birthday, and I asked a couple of AI bots to take over for me while I celebrate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14474,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[388,2,1],"tags":[149,148,153],"class_list":["post-14473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ai-2","category-navel-gazing","category-uncategorized","tag-ai","tag-chatgpt","tag-dreamstudio","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/header_22ndblogbirthday_ai.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14473","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14473"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14473\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14497,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14473\/revisions\/14497"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}