Join Rory here: https://earthlycomforts.uk/2023/01/29/a-wild-aloha-to-you-8/

Should we fear the arrival of more progressive AI [Artificial Intelligence] or embrace it? I think a little of both. I think we need to be skeptical of how “smart” it really is and how we let AI control our lives. What is comes down to is the fact that AI is still artificial. Just like with food, nothing beats the real thing.

How much time do you spend sitting each day? way too much. After walking the dog I get a few chores done then sit and blog. I then do some other things and then sit in my workshop working. I do have something that I am going to try and now that I am putting it into writing I will feel more compelled to do it…I have one of those vibration machines. My old doctor told me that 10 minutes on that is like 45 minutes of muscle work in your legs. I don’t know how accurate that is but I was thinking about standing on it while I do my blogging. It would almost be like the people who have the stand up desks at their jobs. Okay, there, now its out there, now I sort of have to try in case anyone asks…

What is your proudest accomplishment?
[Having Children not included] I think one of my proudest accomplishments is learning how to teach kids who were unavailable for learning prior to coming to my classroom. I don’t think I got to all of the kids but there are a few that I feel like I really had an impact on. I am still in contact with three of my old students. One, a young man, came to me with the reputation that he was a class clown, rude, wouldn’t do work, etc. Well, I met him once and didn’t think anyone had it right. I think he behaved like that because he was smart enough to know that he should know more but didn’t know how to learn enough to “catch up”. Well, he graduated from high school and I believe I helped him to see that he did know how to learn and he was actually pretty smart at the things he once thought he could never do. Another student messaged me a few months ago to ask about plot diagrams in Reading for a college course she was taking. Finally, another female came to me and she was a piece of work. I didn’t know if I could work with her. She was sassy and rude. She was outright disrespectful. But she was just a kid and I recognized that the behavior was there for a reason. Well, come to find out she thought she was too “stupid” to learn. I showed her that she certainly was smart enough to learn and that she could do well at the things she tried. Yes, it might take a little more effort than others her age, but she could do it. She also graduated and took some college classes. Her mom is a hair stylist and when I first met her she said that she would go to school for make-up and hair because that was all she would ever be able to do. We talked about what she really liked and it was photography. I told her that maybe someday she could be a photo-journalist. She is still young but she is moving forward!

Are/Were you the youngest, middle, oldest or only child? I was the youngest until I was 13, then my mother had my brother. At that moment I became I don’t know what…Two years later my mother was diagnosed with cancer and I became a teenage mother (well, that is how it felt). Now I am an only child. None of my siblings have any desire to talk to me and I have already tried to fight that. After being hurt very deeply by three out of four of them I do consider myself to be an only child because no one related to me could be as cruel as these people who say they are my siblings.