An image that Google correctly categorized as a tabby cat was, with only a few pixels changed, subsequently identified by the same algorithm as guacamole.
The Boston Globe
We’re heading into the dog days of summer, which means that my cats are even lazier than usual. They stay indoors most of the day, venturing outside only in the cool of the evening to chill their ever-widening bellies on our bluestone patio, before rushing off into the dark to wreak havoc on chipmunks and squirrels.
Rocco left, Okie right.
“I’m getting concerned about your lifestyles,” I say to them as they take the two Adirondack chairs for a change of pace.
“Says the guy who drank a bottle of Malbec by himself last night,” Rocco says out of the side of his mouth.
“I’m serious,” I say, trying to re-take the moral high ground. “You lie around all day, then you’re out all night. You’re not twenty-one in cat years anymore.”
“How do you do the math in your head so fast?” Okie asks. He’s the handsome grey tabby who’s gotten by on his looks, not his wits, his entire life.
“Don’t you remember anything?” Rocco snaps. “He’s the former Boy Scout/Altar Boy who does fractions in his head when he’s swimming laps.”
“Seven and 15/16 laps.”
“Fractions–ugh!” Okie groans. He’s lived the life of the beta male ever since his younger brother Rocco arrived on the scene. For some reason whenever the cat food is divided in half, he only gets 40%.
“I’m only saying this because we love you guys,” I say. I found this rhetorical turn to be very helpful when dealing with our sons as they grew up. In essence, it boils down to “Don’t break your mother’s heart, you sullen teenager, you.”
“We have to live our own lives,” Rocco says as he gets up to follow the path of a chipmunk, who disappears under the wooden fence we put up around the air conditioning units.
“Do you remember a few summers ago, when Okie disappeared for weeks?” I say in an imploring tone of voice. “How are we not supposed to be worried when something like that happens?” When I want to, I can really implore.
“One for you, two for me. One for you, three for me.”
“That was then, this is now,” Rocco says as he sits back down. “If you want to be able to find us, just give us Google chip implants.”
“Yeah, sort of like the Italian dad down the street who put a GPS device in his daughter’s car so he could break the legs of any boy who tried to slide into home with her,” Okie adds. He apparently listens when we talk at the dinner table.
I give them a look of pitiless contempt. “You guys think you’re so smart–you’ve been watching too many cute cat food commercials that glorify the feline brain.”
“It’s true,” Rocco says. “I read it on the internet.”
“Well, maybe you should pick up a newspaper some time.”
“What’s a newspaper?” Okie asks.
“It’s that stuff he used to put in our litter boxes,” Rocco advises him.
“What’s a four-letter word for ‘excrement’?”
“It has other uses.”
“Right,” Rocco says. “You can also line parakeet cages with it.”
“While that is generally true of The Boston Globe, every now and then you come across something useful in it besides the comics.”
“I like Garfield!” Okie says–figures.
“No, I mean stories like this,” I say, and point them to an article about an Artificial Intelligence conference where the shortcomings of the technology were demonstrated. “Change just a few pixels, and Google thinks you two are guacamole.”
“You’re not going to put me on a nacho chip, are you?”
They are both silent for a moment, as they walk over the Business section. “Gosh–I had no idea,” Rocco says, for once sounding . . . almost humble.
“So let that be a lesson to you, okay?” I say as I give them both a scritch on the head.
“What’s the lesson?” Okie asks, as usual missing the self-evident.
“Simple,” Rocco says, stepping in like teacher’s pet to explain. “The difference between your brain and guacamole is, like, one avocado.”