Tag: Technology

  • Prose Poetry Review: “Guns, Sex, Phones” by Katherine Schmidt

    (The prose poetry piece “Guns, Sex, Phones” by Katherine Schmidt appeared at Rejection Letters on October 16, 2025.)

    Image by Aaron Burch

    It’s been awhile since a work popped me on the nose, making me wake up and pay attention. “Guns, Sex, Phones” by Katherine Schmidt isn’t an angry or an aggressive poem, but it does confront the numb sedimentary routine that can creep in, and dominate one’s life.

    I was taken with the start of the piece; how the first line acted like an explosion, and then what followed were words that created contraction, as if the speaker was falling back into themselves, regressing. Look at that first line of the piece, “My friend says let’s go to the shooting range…” a statement to take action, but then the speaker pulls back, “and I tell her I don’t know anything about guns. About hunting. About how fun it is to let loose.” What follows are three examples of empty, disparate attempts at human connection; dinner with a phone, responding to a text on the toilet, not answering a call from their mother though the speaker watches the screen light up. It’s a good use of the “Rule of Three” and excellent at setting the theme and mood. When the choice is made to take action, to connect both physically and emotionally, an almost resignation takes over. The phone reenters the scene. Though the speaker makes a shallow attempt of connection with their friend via the phone, I can’t blame the friend for not watching the sent meme.

    This isn’t the first piece to decry the vapidness of smart phones, how they are destroying people’s ability to connect with others, or how technology can be alienating. What “Guns, Sex, Phones” touches on with a sharp melancholy focus is how lonely and emotionally trapped this world is becoming. There is no substitute for connection, actual human connection. That these connections need to be cultivated. And if we’re not careful with where we put our attention, we may lose the ability to grow further.

  • An Open Letter to the Bots from China Flooding My Site

    An Open Letter to the Bots from China Flooding My Site

    Greetings Bots from China,

    Welcome to my blog. I know you have been poking around her for the past month and a half, but we haven’t formerly been introduced to each other. So, hello! I’m Matthew Groff.

    And you are? (Please feel free to leave your answers in a comment.) (In fact, anyone who is reading this should feel free to leave a comment.) (And feel free to subscribe as well.)

    Like I said, I have noticed that you bots have looking at all of my posts, and also have been doing searches on different topics. I hope you are finding my posts interesting, and if something does tickle your interest, please give it a “like.” It helps drive traffic, I get a little more money, which will allow me to post more. You, you get how it works.

    I know that there is a chance that you bots are scrubbing my site, stealing my words, ideas and thoughts. If true, it’s not the nicest thing to do, especially if you reuse my intellectual property and try to pass it off as your own. Not cool, and I would hope that you stop.

    But there is a chance that you bots are AI training, and I would like to suggest that this might not be a good idea for you. First of all, I am flattered that you would think that my site would be positive place for your AI to get a better understanding of the world, and how humans think. But if you do go back to when I started the blog in 2017, you’re going to find a bunch of type-o’s and some really bad sentences. (Type-o’s are still a problem if I’m honest, so beware…) I say all of this because you might be teaching your AI to be rather quippy, to use too many non-sequiturs, and share lots of references to shit no one cares about. The again, if you want your AI to sound like an early middle-aged Gen-X white male who grunged too much in his teens and twenties, then you might be in the right place.

    Anyway, I hope you bots found what you’re looking for, and move on your way. I don’t know if you know this, but there are a ton of people out there that blog about home improvement stuff, which I’m sure will be fertile ground for you.

    Wish you the best but please go away,

    Matthew

  • ODDS and ENDS: China Bots, Soccer, Cubs, and Cool Down Damn It!

    ODDS and ENDS: China Bots, Soccer, Cubs, and Cool Down Damn It!

    (If you know, you know and that’s all right…)

    China bots have invaded my blog! At first I thought that I was getting really popular. But then I looked up where all these views were coming from, and it turns out they were coming from one city in China. I guess it’s possible that I’m really popular in China. Then I did a little digging on the internets and found out that this is a common situation. Any case, I would just like to say hello to all you bots out there. Hope you find what you’re looking for. I suggest checking out my latest published piece at Split Lip Magazine. It’s rather insightful, if I must say so myself.

    The kid’s soccer season starts on Saturday. Not much to say other than that this year, I will buy folding chairs so I can sit and watch the matches. Oh, and Tottenham is playing rather well; Only one loss and two draws, with five wins. Lot’s of soccer in my life right now.

    And the Cubs made the playoffs, so I get to see they gang play in October. That’s making my Fall feel better.

    So, to say that I impatient for Autumn is an understatement. I have my huge thick cardigan sweat sitting out in the living room, as I am ready for a chilly evening to put it on, but the air conditioner is on. It’s 83 degrees in the City, and humid as Houston. I know, I know, I know I sound like the oldest of old mean yelling at the clouds, but you need to understand that I am built and geared for the Fall and Winter. Prolonged exposure to Summer and warm weather causes my brain to melt and generally creates a state of high annoyance in me. I need clouds and gray, rain, and leaves changing, and coffee all day. Honestly, if Autumn doesn’t show up soon, I might just melt away…

  • The Ghosts of Computer Viruses and John von Neumann

    Not sure how or why it happened, but computer viruses, at least the subject of them, popped into my head today. It seemed like in the late 90’s and early 2000’s, computer viruses were everywhere. Plenty of news stories, and hacker stories, in the media. There was that movie “Hackers” which wasn’t any good, but hey… I remember buying virus protection for my computers, as it seemed like at any moment something was going to get on my machine and crash it. Then, computer viruses went away. I know ransomware is still out there and a big problem, but I’m talking about those news stories about how “the Melissa virus is out there, and will activate on a certain date” – you know, that kind’a stuff – no one talks about it anymore.

    So, even though I should be working on other things, I started puttering around and reading up on the history of computer viruses, and I came across this guy – John von Neumann. The reason he is here with computer viruses is because he, for lack of a better explanation, came up with the idea of machine self-replication, and then helped create a model for it. Which, in essence, and feel free to correct me, is what a computer virus basically is.

    But then I started reading more about this guy. John was an expert in mathematics, physics, economics, statics, game theory, and he worked on the Manhattan Project. Hell, there is a creator on the moon named after him. Not for nothing, but why haven’t I head of him before? He seems like he was a person of great intelligence, and did just about everything one could do with a huge analytical brain.

  • Goodbye, Twitter or X

    I have been thinking about it this weekend, and I have come to the conclusion that it is time for me to leave Twitter, or X. Not that I have a huge presence on Twitter/X, as I think half of my followers are Russian bots, but it just isn’t the same on there anymore.

    I join a long time ago, and would only pop in occasionally, but with the onset of Covid, I found myself using the app more and more. In fact, I had come to appreciate the app for being able to connect with so many different writers, at different stages of their careers, and I was starting to feel like I was a part of a larger community.

    That changed with Elon taking over. I didn’t think it was that big of a deal, as Twitter always had a cesspool side to it, and trolls abound in darkness. But, since Elon told us that he was a champion of free speech, I began to notice more and more vitriol, hate, and the lies started to boil to the surface often. Now that Elon is using Twitter/X as a platform for boosting Trump’s agenda, and hate, I cannot sit by.

    Though I know I am not a large amount of bandwidth on Twitter/X, I do know that the one commodity I have on this site is my content. And all of us put our content out here for free, which allows Elon to make more money and reach more people. Because of that, I will no longer be complicit. I will use my content, and my dollar, and go somewhere else.

    That platform will be Threads.

    And I am painfully aware that I am swapping out one billionaire for another, which doesn’t sit the best with me, but this is the world we live in. I fear that it will only be a matter of time before I will have to question if using an app is the same as making a moral choice.