I bought an echo dot on a whim

I bought an echo dot on a whim. I was going to post in the thread about Alexa's 'failure' about how miserable the experience was, how demanding of access it was, how little function it delivered in return. But the second half of that story - the reason it led to me blacklisting Amazon belongs here: A day or two after installing the Echo Dot, I wrote a very personal and long postponed email to my sister. We haven't communicated much in years. But COVID ended our mother's life, and ultimately lead to me having a heart attack and being diagnosed with a genetic condition. I wanted to pick up on something she said about memories of the house we shared growing up. I mentioned, in brief, the table tennis set up, and the bright red, multi-layered, over engineered table tennis bat I was bought as a youngster. I wanted to note that it was more expensive than those of my two elder siblings - and I didn't really know why that was the case. I was gently making a concession about the dynamics of our family and how maybe they said something about us as people - fourty years later. …