What will the robots do if humans keep working?

Free basic income without having to work?

Will robots allow us to prevent them from taking over our jobs?

https://twitter.com/i/status/910556945710485504

This is only fine with #BasicIncome. pic.twitter.com/8qyyV6fYUp

— Basic Income Images (@BasicIncomeIMG) September 20, 2017

Firstly: what's the definition of 'work'? Is work everything that's done in exchange for money? If that's the case, pensioners, children, refugees and a lot of disabled people shouldn't be getting any money. So, moving on.

Is 'work', everything that's done but not falls into the category 'spare time'? Than cut benefits from single stay at home mothers. No?

Perhaps Wikipedia can help us out:

Perhaps homework should count as work and thus be financially rewarded? No?

Riddle me this: people who used to work but don't anymore, should they get money 'for doing nothing?' But people who will never work (aka pensioners) do get benefits. Why should an exception be made for students who finished college but haven't found a job yet, people who are blind and therefore have a hard time finding a job, people who've fled from disaster, lost everything and everone and are recuperating in a new homeland, people who got fired and have become unemployed?

And what will you do after robots and/or algorithmes have come to take your job? Would you be fine with dying from hunger 'because people who don't work shouldn't get money for free'?

But your are indispensible, right? Think again.



'Yeah, but for every disappearing job, a new kind of job will surface! Right?

Maybe, maybe not. But perhaps we should prepare for a future of unemployment. For people.


Want to read (more of) my short stories? My author page: Terrence Weijnschenk at Amazon

Communicating with a woman

'It would be easier for me to adequately respond to your text messages if they would make some sense. Could you please at least try to make an effort to type a message in such a way that you yourself would know what it means when someone sends it to you?'

'What do you mean?'

'For one: your spelling is often so bad that it's even hard to figure out if a word you typed is a word in Dutch or in English. Or whatever other language. Second: before you reply it would be practical if you first answered the question I asked you, following your own previous message before you asked me a new question and when I answer it by saying you didn't ask me a question but simply made a statement. Third: please, when you mean one thing, don't say that you mean something else. You would do the world a great favour if you would make it a habbit of reading your own message before you click send. Could you at least try? Please!?'

'I don't know what you're talking about. Show me an example.'

'Okay, here's an old message I received from you. In your own words: what does it say?'

'Let's see...well...er...auto correct probably messed up. I think that third word is French but I missspelled because my phone's keyboard settings are set to English so autocorrect should have corrected it. And here, where I say 'Electric' I meant 'Gas' but it's your fault you didn't know because you should have asked. I don't remember what I meant with the rest of the message because I wrote it so long ago.'

'This message is from 16 minutes ago.'



Want to read (more of) my short stories? My author page: Terrence Weijnschenk at Amazon https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B00K4007NG

Gunsense and school shootings

In November 2019 there was another school shooting in the land of the 'free'. In Santa Clarita a 15 years old boy tried to kill his classmates. Luckily he 'only' managed to kill one of them.

A man by the name of Andrew Pollack (click) responded to the tragedy with this tweet:

The Democrats will now use use the victims of the Santa Clarita shooting (like they did my daughter) to try and take away your rights!

Who uses the death or injuries of children as political weapons?

Sick people!

— Andrew Pollack (@AndrewPollackFL) November 14, 2019

In case the tweet got deleted, here's a screenprint with my replies next to it:

I really don't understand how anyone can blame someone for 'politicicing' a gruesome act but has no apparent difficulties with monetizing (click) the death of his own daughter who was killed in a school shooting. Can anyone explain? To me it seems mr. Pollack tells people it's not okay to gain political benefit from the death of a high shool student but it's a good thing to personally gain from it financially.

Mr. Pollack is adamant in defending his daughter's killer right to carry guns ánd wants schools and politicians to do more to prevent gun homicides. If it was up to him every school in the world would have bullet proof windows, metal detectors, armed teachers and students wearing kevlar school uniforms. He forgets what sane people know: if you want to fight a disease, aim your attention at the cause, not at the symptoms, let alone the consequenses.

Fellow gun nuts claim drugscontrol is the only way to stop people from getting drugs! And guncontrol doesn't work because criminals will get their hands on guns anyway!

What do you think: is control a good or a bad thing?

Want to read (more of) my short stories? My author page: Terrence Weijnschenk at Amazon https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B00K4007NG

Terror and media

'A list of 78 terrorist attacks has not been reported by the media!', Mister Trump said. 'My boss meant those attacks have been underreported.', a spokesperson clarified.  Have they? First question: if 'the media' are not reporting on terror attacks, how come you and I know about them?



If you think Trevor Noah is 'left and thus wrong and when you laugh about something it's not real or serieous', here's a more serious piece of reporting on the Trump administration terror attacks are not - or under-- reported by the media:



Want to read (more of) my short stories? My author page: Terrence Weijnschenk at Amazon https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B00K4007NG