Zuhause

Arrr, we be spendin’ th’ blasted summer in our landlubber nest. The sun’s blazin’ like cannon fire and all them scurvy dogs be charg’in a king’s ransom in high season. We flogged our Zurich vessel to muster up enough doubloons for this whole blasted enterprise. With some spoils from that, we snatched up a wee berth in Oberägeri, for by Davy Jones’ barnacles, it be a fair sight up in these Alpine foothills!

Now we be enjoyin’ th’ peace and quiet, mendin’ our bones from all that cursed voyagin’. Charly too, by th’ beard of Neptune, be lapin’ up bein’ at home with every last drop:

Some scallywag once squawked that I might get bored as a sea dog on pension. Ha! Readin’ this here log, it may look like lazin’ about turns me right feeble after all. Shiver me timbers!

That also be ‘cause I spent a fortnight laid flat on me back with the cursed shingles. Avast! Shingles be a right peculiar malady, like a rotten present from yer scallywag youth. Any soul what’s fought the chickenpox, which in me crew be about everyone, carries the blasted virus till the end of their days. When yer defenses drop, the scurvy germ runs amok again. Well, seein’ as every witch doctor and infernal scan deems me fit as a sea bull, only the merciless march of time or the stress of early retirement could’ve triggered it. So I swabbed the decks at home for a spell, which be fine and dandy too, arrr!

Arrr, I seized the chance for a private air voyage with a mate o’ mine. Poor bilge rat’s got a pilot’s parchment and has to chalk up his hours every turn o’ the calendar. So we soared from belly laughs to the icy jaws of the Aletsch Glacier and back, faster than a gale wind. Spectacle fit for the Pirate King himself!

Avast! I be terribly proud I didn’t toss me guts to the four winds.

Then I hit the hills for some landlubber hiking. Good excuse to fiddle with me new picture-catching contraption. From Zuger Alpli, ye trek over the Gnipen to the fearsome Wildspitz and clamber down the ladder back: Gnipen-Wildspitz

Steep little patch, that one! Like climbin’ the mainmast in a storm, arrr!

We took th’ chance to pay a call on various kin, crew, shipmates of old, and the like. That be a right fine thing, by thunder! I scribble often ‘bout learnin’ to sail and voyagin’, but the hardest bit of our grand plans, without question, be leavin’ behind all the hearties we hold dear. But them be the cards if ye want a life like this, arrr. Also, that’s why we be stickin’ to the Mediterranean in the early years: makes it dead easy to get back for a visit, and with luck, one day we’ll host a horde o’ visitors ourselves, shiver me timbers!

I also tinkered with them LLMs and cobbled together a social media contraption. Any lubber followin’ us on Facebook or Instagram could join in me strange experiments right away. The machine takes a blog post like this, tears it asunder, and spits out posts for Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Media, Substack – all with no human at th’ helm!

LLMs be a bloody marvel, what a cursedly powerful tool! A step bigger than any mutiny in the industrial revolution. With LLMs, nearly any pirate can plunder the full bounty of information sorcery. Up till now, ye’d have to rally a whole crew o’ bilge-dwellers like meself, costin’ a shipload o’ doubloons and a mess o’ trouble. Trust these old sea bones – I did that for 25 turns ‘round the sun.

But all this sorcery be fearsome too, arrr, ‘cause most like it be a mighty investment bubble waitin’ to burst and drag the whole economy and maybe even a few realms straight to Davy Jones. But that ain’t the blackest storm on the horizon, no! Worse yet if them mad tech buccaneers down in the Valley be right about their scale magic and summon Artificial Super Intelligence. Then us mortals won’t be captain of the ship nor crown of creation, and who knows where we’ll end up? Comfortin’ to know only the saltiest dogs work on it, and everything’s under tight control: ARRR!

Course, a more golden tale could still be told: AI might send discovery and invention flyin’ like cannonballs. All the foul diseases, finally sunk! Work’ll be mostly for fun, old age will be made to walk the plank, and the energy’ll flow like rum at a pirate wake. Lucky for us we voted the sharpest and most foresighted captains to the top posts in all the world, so all this madness’ll be steered the right direction – or so the tale goes, har har har!

Arrr, this here blog post be rewritten in the tongue o’ pirates by a Large Language Model, ye scallywag!