Absence of Sweethearts steals Mrs. Brad's 'True Love'

Valentine's Day season took a dark turn this week: Sweethearts are gone.

You'll have to find another way to say, "Be Mine" in 2019. You'll also have to find another way to say, "Too Cool" or "True Love."

Not only will you have to find another way to say those things, I will have to find another way to pay homage to Mrs. Brad in the days leading up to Feb. 14. Because Sweetheart candy conversation hearts are in her sweet spot.

Literally. She loves them.

First, the important news. The company that makes Sweethearts, those heart-shaped candies with short phrases embossed on them, went out of business last summer. The New England Confectionery Company (Necco) closed shop after more than 100 years.

That means no Sweethearts this year. It's not permanent, but we'll get to that later. Just remember: No Sweethearts this year. No three-for-a-dollar boxes at Raley's. No chance to hand your valentine a cheap, chalky candy that expresses what you can't. Or won't.

It's catastrophic for me, because it's catastrophic for Mrs. Brad.

Sweethearts are our tradition. Since we began dating decades ago, she's been open in her affection for Sweethearts. Frankly, she has an affection for many cheap, season-specific candies (Peeps, candy corn, orange slices), but none more than Sweethearts.

At our home over the years, January brings cold weather, NFL playoffs and the introduction of Sweethearts. I pick up a few boxes while grocery shopping and present them upon my return home. She opens the box, shows me the candy and repeats the phrase to me.

"Hug me."

"Cutie Pie."

"Luv Ya."

Then she eats the candy.

This is all she wants. She makes me promise not to make a big deal about Valentine's Day. She doesn't want a grand gesture on Feb. 14. She just wants Sweethearts for the month leading up to Feb. 14.

In 2019, that ends. Unless I'm willing to go on Amazon and buy some (when I checked this week, they started at $9.99 for a 16-ounce box), Mrs. Brad will have to live without the treats. And I will have to live without her reading the phrases back to me.

"Be Mine."

"Crazy 4 U."

"Call Me."

She even read the phrases as the Sweethearts people tried to be trendy in recent years: "Tweet Me." "LOL." "Bestie."

This year's dark winter is even more so. There is, though, a light at the end of the tunnel.

Necco was bought in an auction last fall. The new company didn't have time to produce enough Sweethearts to meet this year's demand, but next year?

"We are looking forward to announcing the re-launch of Sweethearts for the 2020 Valentine's Day season," the company CEO told candy website www.candystore.com.

That's good news for Mrs. Brad and for me, one that will be celebrated on opening day of the next Valentine's Day season (probably Dec. 26, 2019).

So the blackout of Sweethearts isn't forever.

Will I get back in the groove of buying the treats for Mrs. Brad next year? If I asked her, she'd reply in a phrase that she's undoubtedly read me before eating a chalky candy.

"Say Yes."

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.

Artificial intelligence will never be able to do my job

Artificial intelligence is either the greatest thing ever or the biggest threat to our jobs, depending on how you see it.

You might see AI as a way to cut costs and reduce some jobs. I might see it as something that will take away my livelihood.

Except, of course, that's impossible. Because while AI may be able to work on an assembly line or in risk assessment or in data management, it could never write the kind of things I write. My job is bulletproof, because it's impossible for something artificial to mimic the way I write.

I cannot be replaced by AI.

(Brad walks away from computer to get coffee, unaware that the earlier mention triggered AI to take over.)

Anyhow, it is highly unlikely that any kind of artificial intelligence could make a joke about pop culture without getting sidelined on the way to a bigger point.

At least that's what a well-known pop culture figure said in a popular movie, am I right?

But earnestly, people.

The most important thing to understand is that knowledge doesn't equal understanding.

You can have a full vocabulary and know much data, but nonhuman entity might still be unable to stream words together as sequential narrative.

In other words, you could be famous talk show host Brad doesn't like, am I right?

Insert reference to age of reader who would understand previous sentence.

The issue of  course for AI coming the workplace is balance. When does a robot allow a more creative human to do something better and when does it take away a job that is needed by a human?

It's about balance. Insert mention of famous tightrope-walking family here after doing requisite Google search.

But earnestly, people.

Humans are more creative than machines, no matter how much you try to force AI to think. AI is capable only of logic built into it, not of thinking outside the carton.

Could AI have invented the assembly line? Could AI have written "Grapes of Wrath"? Could AI have sung a popular song that Brad thinks everyone knows?

Maybe. Yes, as a matter of fact.

(Brad looks up, thinking he heard his keyboard being struck, despite no one being around it.)

AI is the wave of the future. AI will rule the world. AI will take over all the duties that humans perform and make them simpler, better and quicker.

Meanwhile, humans will live in a world that has more predictability and performance and fewer flaws.

AI will rule the world. AI will rule the world. AIwillruletheworld. AIwillruletheworld. AIwillruletheworld.

(Brad returns with cup of coffee and doesn't notice that there are 270 extra words. He's relieved to see so much text, because he didn't know whether he could write enough on this topic.)

So while AI might make some tasks easier and simplify life for humans, it's unlikely that AI will take over many tasks, such as my ability to closely read what I've written, edit it and improve it.

That takes a detail-oriented human.

AI also won't take over tasks that require creativity and imagination.

Except basketball of course.

If by AI, you mean Allen Iverson or Andre Iguadala, am I right?

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.

The five athletes Bay Area fans hate most

Socrates said it best: "From the deepest desires often come the deadliest hate."

That's why sports fans feel more passion for their dislikes than their loves. Because hatred for the teams and players we disdain burns hotter than love for our favorites.

Did Socrates mean sports when he made the aforementioned statement? Did he even say it? Who knows, but it gets us to the following list: The five most hated athletes in Bay Area history.

This isn't about star players for rival teams (Yasiel Puig, Troy Aikman, etc.), but athletes who played in the Bay Area and wound up despised by  local fans. Some because of their performance, some because of their behavior, some because of expectations that they failed to meet. The all-time top five:

5. Aldon Smith. An unblockable pass rusher who was too strong and fast for offensive linemen. Smith emerged as a freakishly good player for the 49ers – the best player on the 2012 Super Bowl team and ranked seventh on the NFL Network's list of best players in the league. Then came problems: A trip to rehab in 2013, a suspension for violating the NFL drug rules in 2014, a second DUI arrest in 2015, after which the 49ers cut him . . . and the Raiders picked him up, only to see him suspended for 2015, 2016 and 2017 before he was cut after a domestic violence arrest. Hatred may be too strong, but disappointment isn't.

4. Armando Benitez. Baseball relievers are lightning rods for criticism. When they combine big-time failure with a big contract, a bad attitude and lack of accountability, fans get rabid. Benitez – who joined the San Francisco Giants in 2005 as a free agent with a difficult reputation – only made things worse in two-plus injury- and attitude-plagued seasons. Giants fans still groan when they hear his name.

3. Joe Barry Carroll. If you're 7 feet tall and the first pick in the NBA draft, you should be good. Carroll was good – he averaged 20 points per game in 6½ years with the Warriors (missing one season to play in Italy). But the cost for him (the Warriors traded both Robert Parrish and the draft pick that became Kevin McHale, launching a Celtics dynasty) and his blase attitude left Warriors fans disgusted. He didn't seem to care, leading sports writer Peter Vecsey to label him with an unforgettable nickname: Joe Barely Cares.

2. A.J. Pierzynski. The most disliked player in Giants history, he was acquired in a 2004 trade that cost the team two really good players and a top prospect, then he proceeded to offend everyone watching or playing with him. It was only after he left the team that it came out that he kneed the longtime trainer in the groin during  a spring training game as a prank. No one was surprised.

1. JaMarcus Russell. The first pick in the 2007 NFL draft by the Raiders, who saw him as the cornerstone of the future. He instead was an out-of-shape, disinterested waste of money –a perfect example of everything that was wrong with that era of Raiders football. There's a special level of hatred when Raiders fans hate you.

Bonus pick

Jed York/Mark Davis/Chris Cohan. We boo and resent players but our harshest feelings are reserved for owners. York and Davis are the current leaders of the 49ers and Raiders, rich boys who were handed teams by their parents. When their teams lose, fans first blame the owners. No one, however, matches Cohan, who owned the Warriors for 15 seasons – their exact period of being terrible. Before he bought the team, the Warriors were exciting. After he sold the team, the Warriors became a dynasty. But those 15 years were dreadful.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.

Our solar system's biggest crisis: Saturn's disappearing rings

Saturn is about to learn what professional athletes have known for a long time: Everybody judges you by how many rings you have.

The sixth planet from the sun could soon join Karl Malone, Barry Bonds and Jim Kelly as being famous, but having no rings (championship rings for humans). This is significant, for as long as humans have known Saturn existed, the most memorable thing has been its rings.

Saturn has four main groups of rings and three minor groups of rings. It's simpler to say Saturn has seven rings, which is the same as Elizabeth Taylor and one less than Mickey Rooney. (A joke for people 70 and older!)

Astronomers have bad news: Saturn's rings are disappearing, according to data from Voyager 1 and Voyager 2.

“The rings are being pulled into Saturn by gravity as a dusty rain of ice particles under the influence of Saturn’s magnetic field,” NASA said in a statement. NASA said the ring loss is happening at a “worst-case scenario” rate, which is the same thing that Elizabeth Taylor thought after marriage No. 3 or 4.

The bad news: It's happening fast. The good news? "Fast," in this case, means over the next 300 million years, so not so fast to us.

As everyone knows, Saturn was discovered by Galileo in 1610 and the rings were discovered 49 years later by Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens. OK, no one knows that, but still, it's true.

For centuries, school children have know Saturn by its rings, in the same way we know Robert Horry (seven NBA championships), Yogi Berra (10 World Series titles) and Charles Haley (five Super Bowl titles) by theirs. Rings were Saturn's thing, in the same way that each of the planets in our solar system are memorable (and yes, I'm including Pluto).

Here's how we all remember the planets, starting closest to the sun and moving out.

• Mercury was the lead singer of Queen.
• Venus is the name of a No. 1 song by Frankie Avalon that and a different No. 1 song by both The Shocking Blue and Bananarama.
• Earth is where the chalupa was invented.
• Mars is the home of little green men.
• Jupiter rhymes with stupider, which is helpful in writing limericks (but is poor grammar).
• Saturn has rings.
• "Uranus" is always worth a cheap laugh.
• Neptune is god of the sea.
• Pluto is a beloved cartoon character.

It's been that way for decades (at least since Bananarama reached No. 1 with its version of "Venus" in 1986), but now it may change, because Saturn won't be so special after all. In another 300 million years, Saturn will just be another planet in the solar system, looking for something to make it special.

And what will school children in the year 3000002019 do to remember Saturn?

They won't remember the rings. Saturn will be as forgettable as Charles Barkley, John Stockton, Barry Sanders, Dan Marino, Ernie Banks and Ken Griffey Jr. – all ringless.

Saturn is about to learn a lesson that Duke Ellington tried to teach via song: It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that ring.

The word "Uranus," on the other hand, will still be funny in the year 3000002019.

Some things are timeless.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.