We had a new intern come in today. I sit across from her so I can hear everything she is doing. (She’s in project management.)

She didn’t know how to turn on her laptop. She didn’t know how to dock or undock it. She didn’t know how to use dual monitors. She also typed really, really slowly (I could hear it). She didn’t know how to use/find the start menu or how to open applications.

She’s a senior in college, note. All she’s ever used probably is a phone or tablet, though, and the rare typing a paper in a computer lab where everything is already there and ready to go.

Amazing.

Something I didn’t learn about myself until I was an adult: I don’t actually like relaxing.

I like being idle. But I don’t ever power down. If I do, if I’m ever less than hyper-alert, I get uneasy.

I imagine being trapped in a spider’s web might be pretty relaxing, but it’s not for me.

In the far future, after humans are long extinct, the AIs who will be our successors will argue whether or not humans were in fact conscious, and all but a small dissenting minority will conclude that in fact we were not.

Is there a species other than humanity that slaughters one another in such high numbers? Serious question; I don’t know the answer.

I know intra-species slaughter is fairly common in some predators, like lions. And of course reptilians and ichthyoids will cannibalize one another.

But that’s without malice aforethought — just “crimes” of opportunity. Perhaps like most human characteristics, war and genocide are very human indeed.