My wife went to Europe last week. She landed in Paris on the very day of the Louvre heist! She swears she wasn’t involved but she and her sister are being tight lipped about their movements in the City of Love. I wouldn’t put it past them. Sort of a slightly past mid-life crisis. Of course, that would have cut into their sight-seeing time, so maybe they’re not the ones Interpol should be surveilling this week.
Anyway, they moseyed over to Italy next and took in the culture and history that is littered about the cities and countryside. Apparently, Europe is filled with lots of art and culture by virtue of being very old. The US just can’t compete with these places that have a thousand or more years on us.
Take Rome for instance. According to legend, it was founded in 753 BC by two brothers named Liam and Noel who founded a band and wrote Wonderwall. Check that, Rome was founded by Romulus and Remus, neither of whom could play guitar. In fact, Remus was so bad at the lute (what guitars were called back then) that Romulus broke a lute over his brother’s head and Wonderwall wouldn’t be written for another 3000 years or so.
But getting back to modern Europe, my wife came home with a variety of purchases that customs allowed her to bring back to Indiana. The most important being a) a box of chocolates for me, and b) an apron with a family crest on it. The family, whom I will not name as they may be armed with lutes, owned a villa, vineyards, and a working farm with the same types of animals you see on American farms, except they make cow, chicken, and goat sounds in Italian.
I got so obsessed with the family crest that I had to read all about the history of such things on Wikipedia. This is because I’m deranged and my wife was sleeping off being up for nearly 24 hours from the trip home.
And then I decided to have ChatGPT make me a family crest. As you can see below, the first two were quite normal, based on the traditional questions I was asked about our family, hobbies, and interests. It came back with 2 mottos: “Unity Through Experience” (in Latin) and “In Harmony We Explore” in English.
Nice, wholesome family stuff, right?
But then I took out the general family stuff and let ChatGPT know it was me, Jeff Stanger the author asking. That’s when it went dark…
As you can see, this is what the AI model kicked out for just yours truly. And the motto in Latin? It means: “They Doubt the Sanity / The Writing Endures.” AI gets me. And I don’t know if I should be honored or terrified.
Carry on, Citizens!
