Tree Shaped Tombstones - Also Cylons!

 Driving down an unfamiliar rural Wisconsin road just as the light was changing from "great for photography" to "watch out for deer".  I have a keenly tuned sense of where small rural cemeteries should be, and when I spot one its time to pull off for a quick peek.  Any "Tree Shaped Tombstones"?

Yep.  A rather nice "Tree and Book" specimen.  Its unusual in that it has a really big book, so honking large it needs a special little cross piece to hold it up.  

I suppose unusual thing number two is the long interval between the husband and wife being reunited at the foot of this tree.  1892 to 1932.  Forty years.

Oddness is not uniformly distributed in the world.  And this location had more than its share.  Check out the name of the cemetery!

I remember Cylons from the cheesy Battlestar Galactica show.  Malevolent tin cans....

Of course the name comes from elsewhere.  Cylon Township was presumably named for Cylon of Athens.  We used to live in a far more literate country.

And the weirdness keeps coming.  There is of course a nice little church adjacent to the cemetery.  Well kept up, there was smoke coming from the chimney so it is not abandoned.

But hey, what's that sign......

Rather nice lighting for the last picture of the day.  The area out back of the church is some kind of dog obstacle course.  Not sure if the hounds have taken over the building too, but as I saw no sign indicating a two legged congregation was still using it one must assume so....  If you have a naughty pup in the general vicinity of New Richmond Wisconsin you might want to check 'em out.

A. I. gets all chatty....

I've been tapping the keyboard here for many years.  Mostly of course just me sending thoughts out into the cluttered void that is the internet.  But I do get the occasional message back.  I have a link where people can send an email.  Usually of course it's just spam, but every few weeks somebody with similar interests drops a line.  Sometimes it is to say one of their relatives was involved in some local history topic I cover.  Back when I started deer hunting there was a vigorous discussion on what I should purchase for a rifle.  That sort of thing.

Mostly you can separate the wheat from the chaff with a quick look before either approving for publication or deep sixing it off into the spam folder.  But lately I've started to see far sneakier things.  Below is an example.  In part it is stealthy because the second line is "below the fold".  It sure seems like somebody with a similar interest in medicine, travel and ancient Egypt.....

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"It's interesting how the Waiting Room experience has evolved over time. From my days in the clinic, I remember the efforts to keep things neutral and avoid the clutter of biased pharmaceutical ads. The idea was to provide a calm and distraction-free environment, but even in places as historic as the Egyptian temple of Kom Ombo, where patients awaited healing, there are traces of this waiting culture. It's a reminder of how medical spaces, whether ancient or modern, share a common purpose: to offer healing, albeit with different approaches."

"########## offers a great opportunity, while those looking to optimize space can consider a ############ to make the most of their area."

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I of course have defaced and disabled the link, which was for some sort of office storage cabinets.  Or really, for Osiris only knows what.....

Clearly this and similar offerings are generated by an AI program that can analyze text, connect the dots regards context, and cook up a response that is clear, concise and well reasoned.  I have to study a few more specimens, but I suspect it is even copying some of my writing quirks.  It is synthesizing the perspective of a slightly nostalgic retired physician who was never fond of pharmaceutical company propaganda.  

If that is what AI can do today, what can it do in a few years?  I already know some smart people - OK, they are engineers - who advocate using this technology for business and other formal communications.

I disapprove.  

I've worked pretty hard to become adept at short form communication.  I find it carries over from written to spoken formats, as it is all just a matter of organizing ideas.  I'd like to think that I have a few distinctive touches....to compensate for my haphazard punctuation.  I'm not about to let some damned machine take over for me.

In Star Trek Captain Kirk went up against Artificial Intelligences pretty often.  Usually with a good talkin' to, supplemented with a phaser blast when necessary, they were defeated.