The Etiquette of Remembering Your Friend’s Pet’s Name

Kiyomi Lowe regularly hears people mispronounce her name or sometimes forget it altogether. “I get Naomi, Kaiomi, sometimes Kimmy,” she said. It doesn’t bother her: “I’ll respond to anything.” She is less forgiving when friends and acquaintances forget the name of her dog, a shar-pei. “I get Bruno a lot,” she said. To which she…

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Looking for Friends? How About 23 Housemates?

A move across the Atlantic Ocean into the arms of nearly two dozen housemates was not what Ishan Abeysekera had envisioned for himself. But that’s his life now, and he’s embraced it. “I basically went from nearly living on my own for the first time in my adult life in London to basically living with…

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Artificial Intelligence ‘Friends’ – The New York Times

By Kevin Roose Technology columnist and co-host of the Times podcast “Hard Fork” Artificial intelligence, we are told, is a transformative economic force; it will change workers’ jobs, boost corporate profits and reshape industries. But for the last month, I’ve been investigating its social side — by making more than a dozen A.I. “friends.” I…

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