I could pay to ditch all the ads on YouTube, but for now I stop the them after five seconds – and leave pages that don’t offer that option, to teach the system not to do that. Sometimes I also marvel at just how wrong the algorithm seems to be in terms of pitching ads to me.

For some reason, for example, the bots are positive, completely positive (to anthropomorphize), that I’m going to open a restaurant soon. At least, that is my conclusion, since the same two ads for a restaurant supply store keep popping up again and again and again.

Also, some bot somewhere believes (to anthropomorphize again) that I’m in the market for a wife from one Slavic-language nation or another. Must be a guess based on the fact that I’m not young any more. But I’m not a fan of mail-order marriage, whatever the tech. Want a spouse from outside your cultural milieu? Go get her or him yourself, in person.

I haven’t seen an ad for this product, though I did see it on the shelf recently, which is about as random an appearance as many YouTube ads.

Another in the long list of things I will never buy.