An artificial intelligence robot is a new high-tech weapon in the battle to root out disease from Dutch tulip fields as they erupt into a riot of springtime color.
apnews.com
Back in the less technologically advanced days, before everyone became either a youtuber or a life coach or an onlyfans model (actually that last one I see temporarily as a positive development, independent women...), that tulip inspection job was actually not a terrible job. Many predicted robots will take over jobs from humans, but so far I see a lot of jobs being done by robots for which there are no longer people available. Labor that requires putting away the smartphone.
Crawling tulip and potato fields, harvesting out of the soil by hand, was most of my summer holiday as a teenager. Farm towns allowed tents on their local soccer club's fields temporarily. Work 3-4 weeks, meet new
people girls, then spend it all in a week. For some kids, it was how they afforded the books and other tuition costs. Others worked all summer vacation to buy their first car. Nowadays... stupid ass kid whine about whatever the fuck social media tells them is important. Spoiled snowflakes they are.
I oppose free government/tax-payer sponsored access (to universities and colleges) as long as anyone student can easily get a job to pay for it all. Restaurants and bars are going out of business cause students are too spoiled to serve my beer for 15 bucks an hour. That's like 4 times what I got digging up tulip bulbs and there's hasn't been 300% inflation since... except on the price of beer! In a social democracy with lazy spoiled kids, neo-liberal capitalism suddenly doesn't look that bad anymore.
Things sure have changed. There's autonomous drones flying in greenhouses hunting and killing moths, robots scanning and harvesting tomatoes and bell peppers at the ideal time, asparagus-harvesting robots that can look in the ground. Most of them don't reduce the costs, it's more often than not not about replacing expensive humans, but about surviving.
If you really wanted to make good money fast, milk cows. Hard work, horrible hours, but good pay. Nowadays...
Weeeee....
Best summer job I had was watering plants in a greenhouse. Hot summer days, shorts and t-shirt, and just my thumb to control the water coming from the hose. That job too, no longer exists.
