michael-dean-k/

Could I beat Alcaraz at tennis if he were blindfolded? I mean, probably, unless he could reconstruct vision through sound, which I’m pretty confident he can’t. All I’d have to do is (a) lob the ball and get it in on my serves, (b) assume he’s unable to serve blind—through muscle memory he might score some aces, but not enough to win a set, and so he might resort to lobbing, which I could return.

To make this more interesting, I’d allow Alcaraz to have a doubles partner, except the partner has no racket. His job is to hold Alcaraz by the shoulders, usher him around, position him in the right spot, and yell “swing!” That might make it close, especially if they practice in advance.

I asked AI how to give Alcaraz a handicap so the odds are closer to 50/50, and it is considering some options: give him his eyes back but replace his racket with either a frying pan or a 2x4, give him his eyes back but place 4 folding chairs randomly on his side of court and require him to hold a leash of a large dog in his non-playing hand, give him his eyes back but replace his body with a robot and force him to control his body off site with an Xbox controller, etc.

I’m watching a squirrel on a tree; specifically, it’s instinct to structurally brace itself against a wind gust. It is frozen alert, flat, legs wide, arms narrow, neck up at 30 degrees. It looks stuffed. Fake. Is it in fear or wonder or maybe just loving the breeze? Is it scared of the pongs from the pickleball courts, or curious about the strange spherical nuts curving through air, a sport played by millennials and elders on a Friday? I see it swallow, it’s tail fuzz blowing, attached to a white belly with orange at the ears and the edges of the eyes. I step closer and closer, until I can see the glass in its eyes. I look away for one second, look back, and it’s gone. A brown sock hops away through the leaves again, rummaging across the concrete to find another tree.