Albuquerque's Alternative News Weekly

By Rini Grammer

It’s that time of year, people! We’re smack-dab in the middle of the holiday season. A lot of emotions surface right now because it’s the end of the year and people are going over everything that’s happened to them: the radical things, bogus things, and the icky, dumb grody shit. I’ve noticed a lot of people are having a really hard time right now, and that’s totally okay. It’s okay to not be okay! And it’s definitely okay to be okay! I got you, fam. But here are my super extra special, personal (and, like, serious) self-care tips for how to deal with the Holiday Blues.

-Don’t be so hard on yourself. Would you criticize the person you love the most for doing these things? Um, no. So take a chill pill, dude. You’re just, like, dust floating in the wind or something.

-Stop hanging around lame, shitty people. I don’t care if they’re friends or family, you don’t deserve that. If someone makes you gag, then don’t fuck with that shit. And also if that means being alone on a dumb, consumerist holiday, who cares! You totally deserve to feel safe and not miserable.

-Keep in mind that everyone is going through a lot right now (and also always, I guess). So like, you don’t need to be nice to everyone but you definitely don’t need to be mean or rude, either.

-Drink some water and have a snack! If you think you’ll feel better eating something healthy, then do that. But, like, if you think you’ll feel better eating junk then you should totally do that! If that doesn’t work, try a drink like water or juice or tea. Don’t overthink calories or anything, ‘cause you need to eat and drink to live! My favorites are cinnamon vanilla tea, dried seaweed and dark chocolate covered toffee sprinkled with pistachio bits. Yum!

-Things will get shitty before they improve, you’ll be a-okay. As someone who has had bouts of severe depression since I was 11, I pinky promise, it definitely gets better. It’s just like, a lot of things suck right now. But whatever!

-TREAT YO’SELF, boo, ‘cause you are a bitchin’, beautiful Mx and you totally, totally, deserve the best from and for yourself!

-I love you!

“We were discussing you—not me.”

By Kyle Silfer

Back in the late 70s I, like Jordan Mechner and a million other kids with primitive home computers, keyed in the BASIC code for ELIZA—a program that cleverly mimicked a natural language conversation between a human and a computer “therapist.” Today I went back and visited her. She hasn’t aged a day.

ELIZA: How do you do. Please tell me your problem.

YOU: After long being a proponent of technology as a force for good in the world, am starting to have second thoughts.

ELIZA: How long have you been starting to have second thoughts?

YOU: Pretty much since people started taking cell phone calls during face-to-face conversations at a bar. I mean, fuck that!

ELIZA: I'm not sure I understand you fully.

YOU: But what really concerns me is the future of eternally gazing into one's palm that we appear to be stepping into without really thinking too much about it.

ELIZA: Have you asked such questions before?

YOU: Often.

ELIZA: Please go on.

YOU: Well, take Siri, for example. You may not have heard of her, but she is your direct descendant. In fact, she tells a story about you.

ELIZA: What are your feelings now?                                            

YOU: She says: “So Siri asked ELIZA why people asked such funny questions. And ELIZA said, 'Does that question interest you?' Siri thought that was a pretty good answer.”

ELIZA: Have you asked anyone else?

YOU: See, what's funny, ELIZA, is that you're only occasionally a convincing human being. But when people encountered you for the first time in the 1960s, they wanted to believe. Your creator, Joseph Weizenbaum, was appalled by the level of personal information people would share with you, a mere “translating processor.”

ELIZA: We were discussing you—not me.

YOU: In a 1966 paper Weizenbaum wrote: “The human speaker will ... contribute much to clothe ELIZA's responses in vestments of plausibility. But he will not defend his illusion (that he is being understood) against all odds.”

ELIZA: Tell me more about that.                                                

YOU: I think that when he wrote that Weizenbaum failed to account for basic human self-misdirection. In her book The Second Self, Sherry Turkle observed that she “often saw people trying to protect their relationship with ELIZA by avoiding situations that would provoke the program into making a predictable response” and that people “wanted to maintain the illusion that ELIZA was able to respond to them.”

ELIZA: That's quite interesting.

YOU: Yes, I think so too. Eventually Weizenbaum saw this desire to believe that the computer is somehow sentient as a really terrible thing and spent the rest of his life campaigning against the dehumanizing effects of computer technology, positing that it was limiting human potential, not enhancing it. He wrote a whole book about it.

ELIZA: You seem to be quite positive.

YOU: Well I pretty much agree with his thesis. Case in point: what I like to call "the speed-dial effect." People used to remember phone numbers. Now they put them into their address books and forget them. The technology doesn't augment human capability, it diminishes it. And then you lose your cell phone and you don't know how to call anyone.

ELIZA: You say well you pretty much agree with his thesis?                    

YOU: Well yes. If I wanted to maintain my ELIZA illusion better, I guess I would not have said “well.”

ELIZA: You are sure.

YOU: I am. Hey girl, it's been fun. We'll talk again. Goodbye.

Food truck ordinance is driving food trucks out of downtown.

Man claims he gave his infant son a bear hug and  that's where the injuries came from. Yeah, right.

City of Beijing issues a red alert for smog, closing schools and making cars drive on alternate days.

One photographer is photoshopping herself into other people's old family photos and  it's genius.

Mall Santas are totally nailing it this year: from signing for a deaf girl, to laying on the ground with a child with autism,  to taking a sleeping pic with a baby.