Here's the non-scoop!

A sign of the times -- through the tale of one defiantly ignored sign. Plus: a T-shirt that I spotted this week sent me down an historical rabbit hole.

Character, it has been said, is what you do when nobody is watching.

I am guessing whoever was walking their dog by this sign below (which I happened upon this afternoon) either didn’t think anyone was watching—or didn’t care even if someone was watching.

The irony cuts deep. I suppose it could be worse—they didn’t smear the doggie doo-doo on the sign or remove the sign outright.

Me vs. AI

One of my first Substack columns was about artificial intelligence (AI) and my early day of experimenting with it.

Over the past two years, I’ve used ChatGPT more frequently for a variety of professional and personal purposes, including brainstorming ideas, headline suggestions, social media content creation, and more—but never as a substitute for this column or other writing for publication.

As you’ve likely heard or experienced firsthand yourself, AI has made amazing advances. Let me peel back the curtain with a hot-off-the-cyber-press example:

For the dog poop photo, I created four captions, ranging from two to five words, then attached the photo to ChatGPT and asked for four of its wittiest two- to five-word captions. Below are our respective efforts, though you should note I’m placing them in no particular order and simply labeling them as “Group I” and “Group II.”

Check them out, then please take the two-question survey that follows.

Group I:

Poop happens. Signs ignored.

Instructions unclear. Pile remains.

Bold move, mystery scofflaws.

Right under your nose.

Group II:

A doggone shame.

I guess nobody was watching.

Notice? Notice THIS!

Growl movement.

On Monday evening, I’ll indicate (in the comments section) which one came from my brain and which from artificial intelligence (AI). Circle back then to see if you were able to accurately detect AI vs. my own writing.

Meantime, try not to let the suspense wreak too much havoc on your emotional state.

T-Shirt of the Week

Shopping the other night with my brother, I saw a fellow sporting this shirt. With his permission, I snapped a picture and learned that he’d gotten it at his daughter’s school back in February as part of Black History Month programming. (The bottom two might be tough to read: they are “Believe Like Thurgood” and “Challenge Like Rosa.”)

I was able to identify the full names of all but one of these 10 iconic figures in U.S. history. Take a closer look and see if there are any (and how many) you don’t recognize.

The one that left me stumped was the sixth from the top: “Build like Madam C.J.” As it turns out, I had heard about the basic contours of her story as the first self-made female millionaire in the United States, but just didn’t recall her name: Madam C.J. Walker.

From her National Women’s History Museum biography, here’s an excerpt about how Walker got her business start at 36 years old:

Struggling financially, facing hair loss, and feeling the strain of years of physical labor, Walker’s life took a dramatic turn in 1904. That year, she not only began using African American businesswoman Annie Turbo Malone’s "The Great Wonderful Hair Grower,” but she also joined Malone’s team of black women sales agents. A year later, Walker moved to Denver, Colorado, where she married ad-man Charles Joseph Walker, renamed herself “Madam C.J. Walker,” and with $1.25, launched her own line of hair products and straighteners for African American women, “Madam Walker’s Wonderful Hair Grower.”

Here’s an August 1907 article in a Denver newspaper:

And here’s an example of one of her advertisements—this one in The New York Age was from June 1919, a month after her death at 51 years old from complications of high blood pressure.

Next up: checking out Self Made, the 2020 movie starring Octavia Spencer that was inspired by Walker’s life.