With tradition, community and spectacle woven together, the Heart O’ Texas Fair & Rodeo remains one of Waco’s biggest fall attractions. Whether it’s the thrill of bull riding, the rhythm of live music or the comfort of fair food, the event continues to draw crowds — and students — year after year.

At its root, whimsy is not an aesthetic. True whimsy is older, deeper, stranger than that. It is the astonishment that we are here at all, alive, breathing, conscious, inside a universe that by all accounts should not have rolled the dice in our favor.

People now turn to AI as a data analyst, tutor, dietitian and surprisingly even for emotional support. But play therapist? That’s where things get dangerous. At first glance, this may sound reasonable. After all, AI doesn’t judge or bring its own feelings into the mix, but that’s the problem. AI isn’t capable of emotions or empathy, qualities that are essential in therapy.

At the edge of a black hole, we will drag ourselves into a pit that we or our mockeries of creation will not escape. We will have given consciousness to something that cannot think, eyes to a being that will never truly see and a mouth to something that will never be able to scream.