Fortune Cookies, Dec 5, 2025
Fortunes from the local strip mall Chinese/Thai joint, from a takeout order on December 5, 2025.
Left hand column:
- Start every day with gratitude
- The month of June will be filled with laughter and fun
- You’ll find joy in the little moments of life
Right hand column:
- All progress occurs because people dare to be different
- A trip to a foreign country will broaden your perspective on life
One weak advice (1), one actual fortune (2) which references the future, two ambiguously worded possible fortunes, which might also be advice (3), (5).
Fortune (4) is interesting. I thought it was a slightly reworded George Bernard Shaw quote.
In its exact form, it’s also attributed to “Harry Millner”, Harry Milner, or Henry Miller Those don’t look like slips attributable to “AI”, but rather to people half-remembering something, then typing it in.
“Harry Millner” appears to have compiled a book named Pearls of Wisdom (ISBN-10: 1899606254, ISBN-13: 978-1899606252) before January 1, 1999.
Google’s “AI” summary is pretty vague about “Harry Millner”:
Due to the similarity in names, Millner is sometimes confused with Henry Miller (the American novelist) or Harry M. Miller (the New Zealand-Australian promoter). However, “Harry Millner” remains the consistent attribution for his specific brand of motivational philosophy found in literature like Pearls of Wisdom
This particular attribution amuses me. It says “Harry Millner is not a widely documented historical figure”. No kidding. It also says “Harry Millner, who was born in [year] and died in [year]”. That’s amazingly definitive.
My guess is that someone, maybe named “Harry Millner”, compiled a bunch of pithy sayings in the 1980s and 1990s. They probably edited the G.B. Shaw quote “for the modern times”. That someone got the compilation published as the book Pearls of Wisdom. Someone else at the dawn of The Internet grabbed that quote from the book. Several people have copied the quote and misspelled “Millner” as “Milner” or “Miller” when they typed the attribution in to MS Paint or Photoshop. As of late, Millner/Milner/Miller’s aphorism has made it into the text input of various “LLM” “AI” systems.
We’ll probably never be rid of it, nor will we be able to attribute it accurately.