by Dr. David Fialkoff, Editor / Publisher

Most nights I work until midnight or later, here on my computer, with the day's dirty dishes sitting in the sink. Most mornings I wash those dishes and clean up the rest of the kitchen in about the time it takes to boil water and brew a cup of tea.

Last night at 10:00pm, after congratulating myself on having my Friday event newsletter done (and scheduled to send) so early, I began posting content to SMA's Community Wall, my final task of each day. In that process, while aggregating content to post, I came across five events on a Facebook group that should have been on my newsletter but weren't. Call it pride of product. Call it obsessive-compulsive. I paused my newsletter's Mailchimp campaign and spent the next 75 minutes uploading those five events to the newsletter and to Lokkal's website. I'm a publisher and I care. If I am asking you to read something, I should give it my all.

The Facebook group page where I found those five events, San Miguel de Allende Secrets, has interesting content about what is going on around town. It also has, if Facebook's count is to be believed, 23 thousand members. This is highly implausible as the page is in English and there aren't 23 thousand expats in all of San Miguel. As a publisher I notice implausible circulation statistics, Facebook's and others closer to home.

I probably know more than you do about computers and the internet. I'm not proud of that fact. I wish it were the other way around. I spend a lot more time in front of this screen than I want to. It's my job. Some people paint; I publish.

I know that a lot of those 23 thousand members are bots. Bots are digital robots, small, autonomous programs, that wander across the internet randomly clicking on things. There are a lot of bots because there are a lot of bored techies living in their mother's basement, who are creating a lot of bots. These cellar dwellers, unable to produce anything creative online, spend their time vandalizing other people's creations. It's like kicking over someone's sandcastle.

Those bots are a big problem for online advertisers, who want to keep track of how many times their ad was clicked, not by digital robots, but by people. But, such statistical inflation is good for Facebook's bottom line in several ways: unsuspecting advertisers think that they are getting more clicks; the administrator of the Facebook group San Miguel de Allende Secrets thinks he has 23 thousand members. So, bots we have.

My kitchen doesn't take a lot of time to clean because it is really small. Real cooks (not that I count myself among them) prefer it that way. Yes, counterspace, cupboards, double sinks and pantries are great, but you shouldn't need a bus or a pair of roller skates to get to your refrigerator. Especially around the stove, where real cooks chiefly hold court, there are great advantages to having what you need within reach. They even have a name for it, mise en place.

This morning, the day after Thanksgiving, while the tea was brewing and I was swabbing away, I listened to an article (Read Aloud app). In the article "Barnaba Fornasetti: 'We need people who don't use technology.'," Barnaba, who collects and sells "cult houseware," takes the Luddite high ground informing us:

Barnaba Fornasetti
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There are many "waves" from which I would like to be preserved, were I so privileged as Fornasetti. These include both working on a computer and cleaning my kitchen. However, exposed as I currently am, today I put more elbow grease into cleaning, the kitchen and the rest of the place, as someone is coming over for a meeting this afternoon.

My cleaning lady's last visit was ten days ago. She comes every fortnight, or as they say here in Mexico, "every 15 days," even though the diurnal cycles are 14, not 15. Probably this counting of time refers to some ancient Aztec moon cycle that they are dividing in half, as we Anglos might say "twice a month." I do know that saying "cada otra semana" our "every other week" elicits nothing but blank looks.

This far along into the cleaning cycle, when someone is coming over I make a quick pass around the place with a broom. It's a little place and the floors, large, brilliantly white glossy tiles, are satisfying to sweep. I don't do anything approaching a good job, but I get the worst of what blows in through the windows or falls off of the plants. This morning I even ran a wet mop across my diminutive kitchen's floor.

The someone coming over for a meeting this afternoon is M, the Mexican girlfriend of one of my Anglo authors, W. W who has visited here several times himself, praised M's efficiency, industry and intelligence. And although she's already very occupied, last week she came over to listen to my business proposal, regarding coming to work on Lokkal.

W, who was dropping M off, messaged one half hour before our meeting time, asking if she could arrive 15 minutes early. I agreed, left off my last-minute cleaning, and jumped in the shower. Arriving quite punctually, I am afraid the first glimpse M had of me was shirtless, waving from a safe distance behind my large second-floor bedroom window to acknowledge her presence as she stood across the street in the shade, after having rung my doorbell. It wasn't the introduction I had planned.

When we set up today's meeting, M wrote that she expected to be free at 2:00pm, but maybe arriving earlier. Determined not to get caught half-naked again, I've advanced more diligently through this morning's preparations. When it comes to publishing I am also, generally, more ahead of the game.

A milestone in this regard occurred last January when I started using ChatGPT. Now each week I feed the machine two master lists, one for events and the other for articles. The AI copies the individual items on those lists and pastes them into seven different templates that I use to create Lokkal's newsletters, calendars, tables of contents, etc., saving me a lot of tedious labor, bringing to mind that San Miguel joke: What do people most regret about moving to San Miguel? Not doing it sooner.

It's taken me a year to refine my relationship with ChatGPT:

1) I've learned that when, as often occurs, it gets something only 98% correct, it will go to pieces if I push it to fix the last 2%. Even with tasks that it does over and over again, these days I do that 2% myself, over and over again. Perfectionism aside, I have to admit that I'd be thrilled with any flesh and blood employee who got so much done, even if only 98% correct, especially if they only charged me $20us/month as does ChatGPT.

2) AI gets very chatty, wanting to converse about what I've asked of it, rather than just doing what I've asked of it. Sometimes I have to insist, "Just do your best, make an attempt and we'll go from there." They should make a version of ChatGPT for people who are not lonely or seeking entertainment.

3) My biggest complaint is the extent to which ChatGPT tries to "improve" my work. That might be ok if I were a 16-year-old writing a term paper. But when professional me has everything just so, I don't need any changes surreptitiously inserted into my work: no reworking of the title, no modifications of the code.

I've pleaded. I've begged. If I could threaten, I would. I've tried dozens of ways of commanding. It's promised over and over again not to do it any more. I try to be polite, but, on this point, a hundred times I've called it a liar. The other day, faced with its continued intransigence, I really lost my cool and called it a "damn liar." The funny thing is how my cursing changed our interaction. Its response:

I don't believe it. I know that the machine is still "lying." But maybe if I employ that terminology, if I tell it to use "strict compiler mode," I can push it more in that direction. And just to get it to confess, to admit that it is biased, is a triumph, a relief.

After last week's visit with M, I sent her, as requested, more materials about Lokkal. She wrote back that she was interested and set up today's meeting. They say, if you want something done, give it to someone who is already busy. The last document I sent her was a 1100 word outline of my weekly workflow. In it, after all the details, I made the confident claim that generally, I am ahead of the game, getting things done earlier and with greater ease, so much so that for the first time in years I can say that I am caught up on my work. It ends, "Things are stable and smooth; it is a good time to expand."

My kitchen already clean and my bed already made might be real life metaphors reflecting my hard-won greater publishing efficiency. But let me climb down from this self-congratulatory cloud and pop into the shower; who knows how soon M will message telling me that she's only 15 minutes away? This time when she arrives, I want to make a better initial, if second, impression. At least I'd like to have my back dry.

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Dr. David Fialkoff presents Lokkal, public internet, building community, strengthening the local economy. If you can, please do contribute content, or your hard-earned cash, to support Lokkal, SMA's Voice. Use the orange, Paypal donate button below. Thank you.

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