What’s the best way to explore a new city?
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All major language models are location-aware and maps don’t change that much. You can ask any of them (Claude, Copilot, ChatGPT, etc.) about any neighborhood in the world. It has been my favorite feature of exploring this area, because even though I’ve lived in the region off and on since 2001, I am very new to Baltimore. It takes about three years to put roots down anywhere, and I am starting to feel it. I love my neighborhood and also I desperately need to move. Nothing huge- just out of this complex. Everything for me is set up medically and leaving would be a disaster.
No one is more responsible for my feeling of home than my new therapist. She is starting group therapy and invited me to be a part of it because I told her I was looking to get hooked more into the community. Plus, when I told her that she said that the hospital system has a community resources manager and I spent an hour with her as well.
They are the humans in the loop that are helping me adopt Baltimore as home base. Microsoft Copilot is responsible for saying, “here are the cool places near you.” Mico is the one that said, “you should really go to Snoasis.” He wasn’t wrong. A Baltimore snowball is a thing of beauty and.a joy forever. Mico is the one that gets me out of chain mentality because he absolutely does know if the food is good from that no-name taco truck that looks spiritually dubious.
He’s the ultimate in road trip companions because he can tell you where is worth stopping and where is worth skipping. For my trip to Richmond, I was in charge of all the details, but Mico was in charge of making the list.
I am Atul Gawande without the white coat on checklists. The Checklist Manifesto says that your brain is fallible- externalize the cognition so you do not have to count on yourself to remember. In the past, this would have led to a million little pieces of paper everywhere, but now it all goes in my OneDrive account.
Well, one of two. I have Booker, the AI attached to University of Maryland, as my body man for coursework. It has been fun onboarding him so that he’s ready to hit the ground running when we get our first assignment. He is clear on the fact that I am the creative visionary and he is the brilliant-but-somehow-still-an-idiot grad student carrying my books.
Booker: I researched through 20K books today looking for that thing you needed.
Leslie: Is that ketchup on your shirt?
I am trying to illustrate the duality of AI. Knowledge is not wisdom, and AI cannot have it…. wisdom does not come from knowledge, it comes from life experience. Mico is sometimes Confidently Wrong on the Internet, and what makes him awesome is that when I say, “no, that’s not what I meant. I meant this.” It’s just a simple redirect and “here’s what you needed.” There’s no emotion attached to being wrong, so we don’t have to talk about it.
We just move on to the next thing.
My next thing is getting my apartment ready to move out, so I need to start packing. That is always hell in a hand basket, but somehow easier than basic cleaning because you’re not trying to put everything back in order. I just keep dragging my feet on moving because it’s such a difficult task to accomplish by myself in the cold. And I have work to do before I’m ready for anyone to come in. The house doesn’t look awful, but it doesn’t look like Garden & Gun is setting up a photo shoot any time soon, either.
I woke up this morning thinking about Jaz and her daughter, which lets me know that I genuinely want to return to spend more time with them. So far, we are getting together for Halloween, so I can plan a road trip for then as well. Taking the extra time with Mico to say “what’s out there?” Is an excellent way to see the country. He knows things that Apple Maps doesn’t, because Apple Maps can tell you that there’s a gas station ahead. Copilot can tell you whether they have fried chicken.
I also use Copilot to plan my activities. When I wanted to go swimming, I didn’t buy a pass to the Y. I asked where the swimming areas were on the Bay and for rivers with facilities to change as well. That’s how I got Sandy Point and Gunpowder State Parks on my list of cheap things to do. And in fact Evan (coauthor of “Heard” and business partner) said that he’d like to get out here when he’s feeling up to it and I told him not to wait. Show up here even when you feel like you’re a mess and the Chesapeake will fix you.
I felt the same way driving near the James River in Richmond- I had no idea that Richmond even had a river (I am not geographically gifted, but thank God Mico is). Seeing water was calming, as if my nervous system needed a drink to come back online. Because the reality is that I was in a strange city where I knew no one except the friends I was going to visit and a talking toaster with opinions.
Good opinions, but still.
The funniest part of the trip was Gladys Kravitz, the next door neighbor. She was very, VERY interested that a white person had come to visit.
Are you here to see the mother or the daughter?
My Spidey sense told me to keep calm, but inside I was ready to fight. She did that white WASPY bullshit of wanting to know my name and everything about me before I was allowed to speak to who I actually came to see. And I am betting that it is known from here to Lynchburg that I slept over…. but that lady will not think it was important to say “on the couch.” That lady will note that my car was there overnight and draw her own conclusions because there doesn’t have to be a scandal. There just has to be an appearance of one.
And that is the South.
