Hit home

Hit home

Today’s expression is “hit home.” I’m going to show you two related ways to use this expression.

The first way is to say that something has had a strong emotional impact on you. You usually say this about something that has happened or something that you learned. For example, I recently learned that a college classmate of mine died of cancer—he was someone I was friendly with, but not close with.

Now, I’ve heard over the years of other college or school classmates passing away ; most often, it’s from accidents of some kind . And that’s terrible and it’s sad, but it’s easy to think, “Well, I’m not going to get into an accident.” Or, “ the chances of that happening to me are very small.”

But someone my age got cancer and died from it—that hits home because anyone can get cancer. Now I had to confront the fact that I am of the age where this sort of thing can happen to me. That hits home. It has an emotional impact on me.

Sometimes you hear stories on the news about scams and scandals and people losing a lot of money. And that was the case for me—you just kind of feel bad in a general way for people who lose money to scams.

But then I heard a podcast episode about the “pig butchering” scams from China . And on the podcast, there was a woman from the United States. I think she was originally from China, but now living in the United States. And she said in her own words , with her own voice, what happened. And she said how much money she lost—I think it was about a million dollars. You could hear the tears in her voice: It was her life savings with her husband, and money from other family members. Now she’s older and has to go back to work. And she was so ashamed ; she was so ashamed that she offered to divorce her husband.

That episode hit home for me because I could imagine this happening to me or to people in my own life. What would I say if I made a terrible mistake like that? This woman wasn’t foolish or stupid. It wasn’t her fault. It could happen to anyone. I just felt so bad for her—and listening to her in her own words, her voice, it just hit home, it just had a strong emotional impact on me.

So that’s the first way to use it. The second way to use “hit home” is when something that seems abstract , or something that seems far away , suddenly becomes clear and relevant in your life.

And this is how I used it in today’s lesson about ChatGPT . We were talking about how for many people—and this is true for me—artificial intelligence seemed very abstract. I never used it myself. I never knew how. I read articles about it; I felt moderately well-informed . But I never had personal experience with it.

That all changed when I signed up for ChatGPT. When I started using ChatGPT, artificial intelligence really hit home. Now I had a personal connection with it. I was using it! I was testing it. I was experimenting, testing the limits, trying to fool it , seeing what it could do, where it did well, what kinds of commands worked.

It really hit home—now I can imagine it in a lot of other applications . How can I use it to make Plain English better, more relevant for all of you? My head is spinning with ideas . For me, AI has hit home—it’s now personal, relevant in my life because I’ve used ChatGPT.

Inflation is tricky , it’s a silent killer. They report about it on the news, but it’s not always obvious day-to-day, or week-to-week that prices are going up. You buy food every week, and from one week to the next, you might not notice the prices changing too much.

But your bank might have a tool that lets you analyze and categorize your spending . And if you look back on your average grocery bill a year ago, two years ago, versus your average grocery bill now, inflation might hit home. Looking at the numbers might make inflation seem more concrete , it might seem more real when you’re looking at how inflation has affected your own spending.

Quote of the Week

“ The dawn of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race .” That’s today’s quote from Stephen Hawking.

Listen, anyone who has used ChatGPT knows, this is not full artificial intelligence. It can’t take over the world …yet. But there are definitely some ethical considerations to grapple with , and we’ll talk about that in a future lesson, I’m sure.

See you next time!

For now, though, don’t forget about the Plain English ChatGPT challenge , starting Monday, June 5, 2023. Signup is happening now at PlainEnglish.com/GPT. Get your name on the list early because there might be some extra bonuses for those of you who sign up right away—you don’t want to miss those. PlainEnglish.com/GPT.

Get in there, get signed up , get in the WhatsApp group, get ready, we’ll set the stage for you—remember that from a few weeks ago? We’ll set the stage for you—and then on June 5, you’ll be ready to go on ChatGPT with me and with your fellow Plain English listeners from around the world.

And remember it’s only three easy payments of—how much was it again? Oh, FREE! It’s free! There’s no reason not to do it! PlainEnglish.com/GPT and sign up today. See you right back here on Thursday!