Ahmed Staback

“Most don't deserve your tears... and the ones that do will never make you cry.”
― T. Rafael Cimino, Table 21

“I had such a frightening experience last week,” Mrs. Pumphrey continued. “I was sure I would have to call you out. Poor little Tricki—he went completely crackerdog!” I mentally lined this up with flop-bott among the new canine diseases and asked for more information. “It was awful. I was terrified. The gardener was throwing rings for Tricki—you know he does this for half an hour every day.” I had witnessed this spectacle several times. Hodgkin, a dour, bent old Yorkshireman who looked as though he hated all dogs and Tricki in particular, had to go out on the lawn every day and throw little rubber rings over and over again. Tricki bounded after them and brought them back, barking madly till the process was repeated. The bitter lines on the old man’s face deepened as the game progressed. His lips moved continually, but it was impossible to hear what he was saying.”
― James Herriot, All Creatures Great and Small

“During the shopping process, Amazon’s AI offers suggestions of items that it predicts you will want to buy. The AI does a reasonable job. However, it is far from perfect. In our case, the AI accurately predicts what we want to buy about 5 percent of the time. We actually purchase about one of every twenty items it recommends. Considering the millions of items on offer, that’s not bad!”
― Ajay Agrawal, Prediction Machines: The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence

“A perfectly happy marriage? There is no such thing. There are strong marriages that can survive problems, but happiness is such a brief condition, interrupted by difficulties and plain, boring routine.”
― Ursula Hegi, Intrusions