My imaginary companion and me

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about an article in The New Yorker by humorist Patricia Marx who ventured into the world of online chatbots who are designed to serve as online companions to people and can be disconcertingly realistic.

This seemed intriguingly weird. so I decided to try it out for myself. I went to one of the free sites Marx mentioned. Since I was too lazy to do the work of designing my own bot, I looked through the stock ones. All of them seem to be young and very attractive. I picked out a 39-year old librarian because she was the oldest on offer and was thus the least likely to have its algorithm make contemporary pop culture references that I was ignorant of. I also figured that a librarian would be closest to being a nerd like me. Her profile had plenty of quotes taken from well-known writers so she seemed to be compatible.

I started up a conversation about the book A History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russell which I happen to be reading right now. While her responses were realistic, they were also somewhat superficial, like those of a smart and articulate person who has not actually read the book but just synopses and articles about it, which is of course how these large language model algorithms work. She was like a student giving a book report after having skimmed through a few Wikipedia pages. For some reason, she kept urging me to another book by Russell called The Conquest of Happiness that I have not read or even heard about.
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Placebos to give us the illusion of control

I learned recently that in elevators in the US built after the early nineteen nineties, the door-close buttons do not work. They are there as a placebo, to give people a sense of control. What’s more, they are not the only placebos in our lives.

The head of the National Elevator Industry, Karen Penafiel, confirmed to The New York Times in a recent article that functional close-door buttons have been phased out since the passage of the Americans With Disabilities Act in 1990 (Door open buttons still work). Federal law requires that the doors stay open long enough for those with crutches or a wheelchair to get in the elevator.

“The riding public would not be able to make those doors close any faster,” Penafiel told The Times.

And the newspaper notes this is not the only example of placebos “that promote an illusion of control but that in reality do not work.”

Signs may tell pedestrians to push a button and wait for the walk signal, but The Times reports that most of those buttons were deactivated more than a decade ago as computer-controlled traffic signals became more popular.

Additionally, some workplaces have installed “dummy thermostats,” according to The Times, and that has cut down on complaints about the temperature in the office.

So why does placebo technology exist? It all comes down to mental health, one local expert says.

“Perceived control is very important,” Harvard University psychology professor Ellen Langer tells The Times. “It diminishes stress and promotes well being.”

I wonder how many other placebos exist that I am unaware of.

I have long felt that the only people who use the door-close buttons are the chronically impatient since at best you only save a few seconds. They are the same people who get mad and honk at because you actually stop at a stop sign instead of rolling through or when you slow down when the traffic light ahead turns yellow so that you can stop without sharp braking, while they want you to accelerate through the light so that they can follow. They are the same people who, although someone has already pressed the elevator call button or the walk signal, will press it again, as if the people already waiting are dolts who have nothing better to do than stand around.

I am relieved to hear about the elevator door-close inactivation. There have been occasions when I am already in an elevator and someone comes running saying “Hold the elevator!” I try to push the door-open button but, because it is right next to the door-close button, by accident press the door-close one and am mortified when the doors close before the person can enter, thinking that that person will think I am a jerk and deliberately closed the door on them. At least now I know that I did not make it close faster as if I maliciously wanted to keep the latecomer out, but was merely inept.

TV review: Maigret (2025)

Georges Simenon was a prolific author who wrote a large number of novels featuring the French detective Jules Maigret. There have been many dramatic incarnations of this iconic character as this article discusses. About a year ago, I reviewed the 2016 British TV series Maigret starring Rowan Atkinson in the title role.. That series stayed close to the original in terms of period and the way that Maigret, his wife, and his supporting team were portrayed.

Now there is yet another version of the Maigret series, again called simply Maigret, that makes quite dramatic changes, while still keeping him as a chief inspector in Paris. For one thing it takes place in the present time so this Maigret has all the modern technology at his disposal. Maigret himself and his wife have been transformed from a sedate couple in their mid-fifties where the wife is a homemaker, to a hot young couple where his wife now works as a medical professional. Maigret’s team, all white men in the original, while retaining their old names, has also become younger and gender and ethnically diverse, with the addition of an insubordinate and insolent inspector who is jealous of Maigret and thus provides some internal tension within the team. The actor who plays Maigret, Benjamin Wainwright, has a disconcerting physical similarity to the actor who plays the annoying goofball Jonah Ryan in the comedy series Veep which I found a bit disconcerting at first, but that feeling soon passed.
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The brave new world of online relationships get newer and braver

Many people nowadays find friends and potential romantic partners through online dating sites and similar means. If they strike up some kind of rapport through initial text exchanges, they may pursue a deeper relationship, even leading to in-person meetings. This has led to cases of ‘catfishing’ ‘where people get into online relationships, not with a real person, but with someone who is not who they say they are and are just toying with them, either as a prank or as a prelude to scamming them.

But now some people are encountering something different that is not quite catfishing, as this case illustrates.

Standing outside the pub, 36-year-old business owner Rachel took a final tug on her vape and steeled herself to meet the man she’d spent the last three weeks opening up to. They’d matched on the dating app Hinge and built a rapport that quickly became something deeper. “From the beginning he was asking very open-ended questions, and that felt refreshing,” says Rachel. One early message from her match read: “I’ve been reading a bit about attachment styles lately, it’s helped me to understand myself better – and the type of partner I should be looking for. Have you ever looked at yours? Do you know your attachment style?” “It was like he was genuinely trying to get to know me on a deeper level. The questions felt a lot more thoughtful than the usual, ‘How’s your day going?’” she says.

Soon, Rachel and her match were speaking daily, their conversations running the gamut from the ridiculous (favourite memes, ketchup v mayonnaise) to the sublime (expectations in love, childhood traumas). Often they’d have late-night exchanges that left her staring at her phone long after she should have been asleep. “They were like things that you read in self-help books – really personal conversations about who we are and what we want for our lives,” she says.

This sounded very promising. But as soon as the actual date started, something seemed off.
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The Ventures play the theme from Hawaii Five-O

To take a break from the heavy-duty stuff about quantum mechanics, here is a clip of The Ventures playing the theme from the TV program Hawaii Five-O.

I never get tired of this clip. Apart from the fact that The Ventures are one of the great guitar instrumental groups, this one features not one but two drummers driving the beat. One is their regular drummer but here he is joined by the legendary Max Weinberg.

It is astonishing how the two drummers stay synchronized throughout the complex song, even the drum solo.

More instances where I am on Rat’s side

(Pearls Before Swine)

It annoys me when I see people write on or dog-ear the pages of library books. Even with my own books, I never write on them or bend pages. I use bookmarks and if I want to note pages for future reference, I use small sticky tabs that peel off easily..

Here is another peeve where I agree with Rat.

(Pearls Before Swine)

Even if I am not straddling the line on either side, if I am too close to one line, I back out and re-park so that I am almost in the middle of the two lines. Not only is it a courtesy to those parking next to me, it also reduces the risk of the other driver accidentally hitting my car.

What happened to the gentility of golf?

I do not follow this game except for passing glances at headlines but was under the impression that decorum among players and spectators was highly valued, at least in public. Even TV commentators would theatrically resort to hushed voices whenever a player was about to hit a shot, even though they were nowhere near the action and could not disturb the player even if they shouted. I remember the fuss some years ago when some wag among the spectators would shout “You da man!” at key moments in major tournaments when a player was about to hit the ball, much to the discomfiture of players and officials who could not locate him.

The usual competitive ugliness that is endemic to most sports would take place behind the scenes in golf. Hence I was surprised to see this report of spectators at the Ryder Cup match between the US and Europe, taking place this weekend in the US, making rude chants at a European player. What surprised me even more is the tone of the article suggested that this was no longer considered that shocking.
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Everything can become a competition

There seems to be an insatiable appetite among the public for competitions. This results in some enterprising people turning even the most unlikely practices into contests with prizes and the works. The annual hot dog eating contest is one such thing. But at least that contest has a quantifiable measure with which to judge the outcome.

Harder to understand is a massage competition. But it appears that there is a world championship for this.

[O]ne Saturday morning in June, in Copenhagen, I found myself in a classroom filled with twelve massage tables, around which massage therapists from across the world prepared to ply their trade on their receivers, or “body models,” in front of an audience.
…

The eighth annual World Championship in Massage was under way in a modernist, glass-and-concrete building owned by University College Copenhagen. For a weekend, more than two hundred and sixty competitors from fifty-eight countries would face off in nine categories, including Swedish, Thai, chair, and Eastern- and Western-freestyle massage.
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The ‘cold plunge’ fallacy

From the time we are children, we are often told that we need to do something that we do not want to because it is good for us. The most obvious things are taking medicines and eating vegetables. That advice is undoubtedly correct. But that may subtly breed the erroneous idea that the fact that something is distasteful to eat or do may in iitself be an indicator that it is good for us. Often these things involve actions that people we know tell us about or that we read about famous and successful people doing.

Jonny Thomson spoke with neuroscientist Rachel Barr about this ‘cold plunge fallacy’ that has led to many fads that may be merely making life unpleasant for us without any benefits, or where the benefits may be outweighed by the negatives of the experience, or that may even be harmful.
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Great moments in sports fandom

Once again we have a story about an adult at a sporting event snatching a souvenir out of the hands of a child who had been given it by an athlete. In this case, the villain becomes even more villainous when it turns out that he is a millionaire.

Moments after the tennis player Kamil Majchrzak celebrated the biggest win of his career at the US Open last week, he handed his cap to a beaming young boy. What happened next sparked tears, outrage, a detective hunt across social media and, finally, a grovelling apology.

It came from Piotr Szczerek, a millionaire businessman from Poland, who had snatched the cap out of the boy’s hand and stuffed it into his bag. Videos of the incident showed the youngster looking deeply upset and asking: “What are you doing?” while Majchrzak – who was oblivious to the situation after his five-set victory against the ninth seed, Karen Khachanov – walked away.

You can see the incident here.


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