The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

There’s nothing like reading about the future in the morning paper to wake you right up to Full Alert. This morning, buried among the scintillating stories of the Prince of England’s funeral and more mass murders, was the article about the company here in Washington state that was deploying its mobile lasers to prowl the agricultural fields at speeds up to 5 mph zapping weeds. I know what you’re thinking, probably those Jews in outer space that start forest fires in California, but let’s leave that for the Qanon folks to chew on when they get tired of wondering how the Donald never quite managed to penetrate the Deep State and the assault on the Capitol ended with him retreating to a mansion in Mar-a-Lago.

Part of the article concerned the plight of the poor strawberry pickers and the field workers whose low paying jobs might disappear when Artificial Intelligence Machines could pick apples or harvest cucumbers. Hello? I guess the writer thought maybe we should go back to the happy days of slavery and resume picking cotton by hand. The laser weeders would eliminate the need for pesticides, but hey, maybe that would cut down on oncology doctors. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not excited about a future of drones taking away good paying factory jobs or self-driving vehicles eliminating taxi drivers and Uber folks.

Now I know lasers don’t kill, people kill. And I suspect drones will be given all the protection the NRA can muster for their 2nd amendment rights to keep and bear arms. And if one of the weeding machines runs amok, well, that’s the price we pay for freedom. Just another unfortunate incident of malfunctioning technology, frequent but nothing that should be considered grave enough to ban automatic lasers in our suburbs when dandelions are taking over the fescue.

I was on the campus of the Univ. of Wisconsin in Madison, my old alma mater, down near the cafeteria I used to work at for 3 years, watching these little R2-D2’s at the intersection waiting for the students who had called in their pizza orders to come and pick them up. Pizza delivery folks must be weeping. But at least the boxy white drones weren’t armed with lasers. No tip, buddy? Try a small burst from the rear laser then, maybe you’ll remember next time. And have a nice day, kid.

My suggestion? Carry gratuities at all times. You don’t want to piss off a laser armed drone when they all start to ‘carry’.

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