When I concluded yesterday’s post about formulary changes, I thought about typing -30- at the end and linking it to my post a few weeks ago explaining its use. (You may recall I described how, many years ago, I had inadvertently deleted a lengthy post about the early days of printing, journalism, and the use of -30- to end a message or story.)
But, when I looked for the post so I could grab its URL, I couldn’t find it. I scrolled back through all of 2025 and still couldn’t find it. I couldn’t remember the exact title so I ran searches for specific words I might have included. Still no luck. Was it perhaps older than I recalled? Nope. I looked through my list of comments, thinking I’d find one that referenced it. Not there.
Finally I came across info I’d forgotten … there’s a trash location specifically for deleted posts. And there it was!! Tada! I’ve no idea how it got there but I gleefully clicked “Restore.”
And it disappeared!
I dashed off a frantic note to WordPress support. Hurry! Maybe it’s not yet gone forever. Please help!
And a quick response came back explaining exactly where it was and how to post it again. Which of course I did immediately.
Then I went back to thank, profusely, the WP happiness engineer who had helped me, only to find it had been WP’s AI assistant. I was genuinely sad I couldn’t thank a real person.
By now you must have realized that’s TWICE I’ve posted an item about -30- and TWICE I’ve managed to delete or lose the post. 4,300 posts across 20 years and these are the only two I’ve ever managed to lose? Weird.
Perhaps someone or something is trying to tell me not to write about ____ again. Maybe I will, maybe I won’t.
Most likely by next week I’ll have forgotten the whole thing anyway.
_____________
Image generated by WordPress AI
Your story is upsetting. Can I trust the computer when I do banking and investing? “The AI did it,” is likely to become common. It’s happening.
Everything that happened to me was the result of something I did on my computer. The first time, as I explained, was my clicking “delete.” Entirely my fault. I don’t know what I did or failed to do the second time, but WordPress programming saved the day (as it might have the first time, if I’d known what to do). AI didn’t have anything to do with it. Your financial institutions’ records are managed by experts and they will have all your info if you ever screw it up on your own computer. However, you should be backing up your own files as well. Recreating your own records could be very time-consuming.
If you don’t have some security software on your computer, might want to install something like McAfee or Malwarebytes. Can’t hurt, might help. Meanwhile, stay alert for email and phone phishing, scams, etc. I try to reassure myself that I’m a very small fish in a very big pond but I still keep my guard up as best I can.
I loathe and detest AI and everything to do with it.
It destroys initiative. Kills off proper research.
Yeah, I’m old. 🙁
It has its uses. While I usually hate its off-target useless replies when I ask WP support for help, and hate anytime, anywhere I find I’m communicating with a computer instead of a human (that may or may not be AI in action), it was spot on this time with a very fast, very helpful reply. Or maybe I’m conflating AI with routine computer behavior. I dunno.
At the risk of veering off topic here, I had an interesting chat with my son yesterday about AI. Generative AI grew at frightening speed for the first couple of years after it was introduced. It “learned” by looking at and reading, copying, etc. everything on the internet. But he said its growth is slowing now because it’s starting to feed on itself. That is, so much of what it now “learns” from the internet is itself AI-generated.
What a horrible thought, Colorado !! Looks like it’ll be a shitshow ere long.
I’m happy.
That’s the great objective — don’t worry, be happy. Not always easy to do.