I watched Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show on YouTube, but not until this morning because I didn’t want all that football to get in the way. It was great.

Did anyone catch the “All-American Turning Point USA Alternative show?” I haven’t seen it but I read that Kid Rock performed his one-time breakout single, “Bawitdaba.” That’s the one that goes “Said the boogie, said up jump the boogie, Bawitdaba, da-bang, da-bang, diggy-diggy-diggy.” I have always really liked that song.

Bad Bunny’s show set a new all-time record, according to CBS, with more than 135 million viewers. Not everybody liked it, though.

“The Super Bowl Halftime Show is absolutely terrible, one of the worst, EVER! It makes no sense, is an affront to the Greatness of America, and doesn’t represent our standards of Success, Creativity, or Excellence,” President Donald Trump declaimed in a statement on Truth Social. “Nobody understands a word this guy is saying” (it was all in Spanish; Bad Bunny is from Puerto Rico), “and the dancing is disgusting …”

Oh well, de gustibus non est disputandum, I guess.

I looked up Kid Rock and it turns out he was born in Romeo, Michigan, not far from Pontiac, where I was born. It’s kind of funny that he’s called Kid Rock, as he is 55 years old. “This old heart is telling me, you ain’t no kid at 33,” as Danny O’Keefe and Waylon Jennings used to sing. (“Good Time Charlie’s Got the Blues.”) Then again, Robert James Ritchie (that’s his birth name) was, like all of us, a kid at one time, and maybe he got the nickname at a young age and it stuck.

My grandson, Jack, is turning 12 on the final day of the Zodiac sign Aquarius (Feb. 18) in the Chinese Lunar Year of the Horse, which begins Feb. 17. Speaking of kids, I just read that Aquarians are called “the cool kids of the zodiac,” and this is definitely true in Jack’s case. They are deep thinkers and trend-setters who don’t care what people may say.

While spending an inordinate amount of time online, intermittently searching for ideas for birthday presents suitable for 12-year-old boys, I was occasionally requested to check a box promising that I Am Not A Robot, and once or twice asked to identify pictures of bicycles and traffic lights. These are CAPTCHA tests or puzzles; CAPTCHA stands for Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart. CAPTCHAs are designed to detect bots posing as humans. A bot (short for robot) is a computer program or algorithm that speedily performs repetitive tasks and can automate processes.

There are many kinds of bots, and while some, including search engines and automated customer support, are useful, there are also malicious bots, created in order to steal data, break into accounts or overload systems.

In its battles with the CAPTCHA, artificial intelligence is coming out ahead.

I am not surprised that A.I. is superior at solving CAPTCHA tests. I’m terrible at distorted letter and numeral identification and those little picture puzzles, and I find it very irritating that I’m asked over and over again to deny I’m a robot.

I’m aware that the CAPTCHA information I’m gathering is all supplied by A.I., and I’m getting the distinct impression that A.I. is gloating.

“Some studies have even shown A.I. solving CAPTCHAs 6x faster than humans,” A.I. points out.

“Modern, A.I.-powered bots can solve image-based and text-based puzzles in under a second, rendering traditional, static CAPTCHAs largely ineffective,” A.I. goes on to brag, “while humans often take 9 to15 seconds, with lower accuracy…This technological shift has created an absurd situation where legitimate users struggle with increasingly complex challenges while malicious bots breeze through them with ease.”

The CAPTCHA’s days may be numbered. It’s being replaced by invisible, user-friendly, privacy-focused alternatives that analyze user behavior and device data instead of manual input, again according to A.I.

My friend Jay was born under the sign of Aquarius in the Lunar Year of the Monkey in 1945. It was Late January, and his birthday just missed the Year of the Rooster. Whatever happened to “The Dawning of the Age of Aquarius” we used to hear so much about? I asked him. In 1969, the song by the Fifth Dimension was number one on the charts.

“This is the sunset of the aged Aquarius,” he said.

Happy Valentine’s Day.

(Martha Allen, of Keene Valley, has been writing for the News since 1996.)