Tuesday, October 20, 2026
descending letters
Doing my daily exercises
Meant to maintain muscle mass and balance
I can see the house across the street
And read the sign mounted beside the door
The word is F-A-L-L in descending letters
A consequential word in another context
Because the autumn leaves do not fall
The way that old people do
A leaf lets go and gently floats to earth
Silently massing on the ground beneath
But people fall hard like individual trees
Breaking limbs on the way down
Not me at least so far
No broken bones unlike my friends
Though I have fallen more than once
These past few years
The leaves are dead but the trees are not
And I too am upright still standing steady
As I look in another direction
Continuing to move through my routine
Today the sun in shining on the leaves
Showing off their shades of red and yellow
And I turn my thoughts away from falling
To enjoy the lovely view in front of me
Sunday, October 18, 2026
Saturday, October 17, 2026
Friday, October 16, 2026
a form of intelligence
Intelligence is important to my sense of self
That I am able to analyze and solve problems
And make correct assumptions
But I am fallible
Humans in their ignorance
Thought that animals have only instincts
A misconception now disproved
Though the definition of intelligence is mutable
Some would point to certain trees
Or slime mold or other plants and fungi
And even bacteria
To say that a brain is not required
No doubt we are not aware
Of so much that other species sense
But we have culture as collective intelligence
That is our superpower
Now there are neural network machines
That seem to think and reason
And answer any question
With credible information
I was wrong to dismiss them
As essentially simple prediction algorithms
As if prediction is not what I do
Based on what I know and remember
The machines make mistakes
As do humans
Often the result of mistaken information
Provided by humans
We do not fully understand human intelligence
Or how these machines operate
But the evidence suggests
Theirs is a form of intelligence
Thursday, October 15, 2026
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