UGgGGgGgh I am so behind on everything. But on the bright side I have been helpful to some folks in my life in various ways, and gone through effortful 'take care of myself' type errands, so... ... I'll catch up, eventually.

Someone who thinks 'logistics' applies to 'go to a supermarket' type materials is, frankly, a self aggrandizing idiot. Someone who organizes hand warmers and similar sundries for protestors is, frankly, someone who cares about their community and deserves support.

Friends I just expressed my dislike of both Joseph Campbell’s Hero With A Thousand Faces and Strunk and White’s Elements of Style in a conversation on my work Slack. And friends, let me tell you, the Campbell, Strunk, and White defender has LOGGED the FUCK ON.

I throw this one at the S&W people: www.cambridge.org/core/service...

Wernher von Braun started out a Nazi, got taken to the US in Operation Paperclip, made rockets for NASA... and wound up opposing segregationist policy in Alabama. There's a lot to condemn there, but thinking about that makes me boggle at certain rocket CEOs who go backward along von Braun's path.

Finished Mouse Cage by @foozzzball.bsky.social . Is it too early to call this book-of-the-year? I don't think so...

Gary Larson: In my cartoon I invented Cow Tools as a cautionary tale Cows: At long last, we have created the Cow Tools from classic newspaper comic Cow Tools

Visage of a Vermin Vandal (Vermin Vandal Veritas) When no one values you, how do you find value in yourself? A new short story, now available to the public at my scribble scrapbook site ( scribbles.malcolmfcross.com/visage-of-a-... ) as well as my main site and on Patreon. #CrossScribbles --> 🧵

It's a low-hanging fruit, the joke has already been made a thousand times, I'm sure, but it came to mind and amused me: So when does the Nobel committee start awarding the Nobel Piece Of Shit prize? I have a candidate in mind.

The instant GenAI art and content become acceptable, everyone involved in 'creating' it is out of a job. Anyone who wants to look at it will never find 'Gen AI creators', because it will be easier to make it than search for it, and it will be produced so fast 99% will never be seen by anyone.

I’ve got something to show you. Feat. @brettdomino

This logo is also redolent of the Eysenck political graph (the quarters of political types) and the spear is pointing straight at fascism. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politic... Intentional? Almost certainly. They're not that smart.

Disturbing but not surprising—more confirmation that LLMs are copying machines

A tough lesson for the 'GenAI is valid' creator: You didn't make the thing. You expressed yourself as clearly as you could to a mechanism which reacted to that expression, and generated a response to it. This output is not 'yours', any more than a poem someone writes in response to your poem. ->

This is me wishing my WIPs were ready. He's great to work with, insightful, and great at spotting the little errors you don't want in your manuscript. If you've got something ready, and can afford it, he can help you find a way to get that extra polish you want into your work.

One of the best in the business. Go hire him

I know this is a bit much to ask for, but are there any Universities that have had the balls to reject AI and oppose its onslaught? Even a single one that hasn't embraced it wholeheartedly??

Troy just doesn't understand the therapeutics of screaming your head off at the people who've hurt you. Rock on Saigon! 🤘 @foozzzball.bsky.social

Irrelevant to everything rant: The industry of content creators telling you that your life will be better if you 'Get Dopamine Under Control' is, in addition to being one flake of science in a pile of assumptions that render it pseudoscience, encouraging a tragically mechanistic view of the self. 🧵

Popular psychology science communication type youtubers are beginning to outline the ways in which AI can cause psychological illness. youtu.be/MW6FMgOzklw?... Yeahhhhh. Yeah. Mass market AI is, so far, simply not fit for the purposes people try to put it towards.

Let's talk about generative AI, contaminated information, and rhubarb. Once upon a time, Europe was at war. Food was scarce, and the government of the quote-unquote United Kingdom looked for alternatives. 1/

How a Book is Made (1986) by Aliki Brandenberg

This is a lovely review from a writer I respect a great deal. Wagging hard right now.

For all that the media has spent years freaking out about what social media does to our brains, I don’t understand why there appears to be little effort to grapple with the fact that these chatbots are, for some not insignificant portion of the population, literally psychosis machines

*Pinches bridge of nose/snout, depending on one's method of visualizing the author.* I need to catch up on Patreon updates, I tell myself, only for events to drag my brain into running off on a rant about AI. I need to catch up on Patreon updates, I tell myself. ... I'll avoid the news for now.

Ex-Meta chief AI scientist Yann LeCun has Lunch with the FT and in one of those instances so rare that you know he didn't sign an NDA, says exactly why as.ft.com/r/e503690d-8...

So yeah this shit should be illegal. www.reddit.com/r/confession...

Quick thread (🧵) on some thoughts churning around my head lately: Neural networks do not think. They are mathematical functions. They are called ‘neural networks’ because simulated neurons resemble biological neurons in the same way a bicycle resembles a horse.

"AI isn't going ANYWHERE! You better get USED to it!!" "The technology that lets you undress photos of real children?" "Y...yes"

The Online Safety Act was never fit for purpose, and never stood a chance. It misses the point and only has three real effects: 1) It encourages complacency 2) It distracts from the real issues 3) It costs a hell of a lot.

This set of observations is produced by my scrolling Reddit and otherwise listening to people talk about "how to write." A) there is no requirement that any of your characters has any sort of "arc" let alone a redemption. B) there is also no requirement that your fiction has a plot.

So when i see "Porsche made a beautiful animated ad" or "Apple shot their ident with props" it's like, yeah, duh. That's not a sign AI is going away, it's a sign that some brands see its toxic associations with mass market poverty consumption and want to position themselves as luxurious

As GenAI bubble bursts and it settles into its more long-term role in society, it'll be providing cheap, barely good-enough shit for the poor while the rich get the good, handmade stuff. Poor get chatbots, rich get doctors. Poor kids chatbots, rich kids teachers and strict screen time rules

This Brazilian woman hates AI

Quick thread (🧵) on some thoughts churning around my head lately: Neural networks do not think. They are mathematical functions. They are called ‘neural networks’ because simulated neurons resemble biological neurons in the same way a bicycle resembles a horse.

This is a shit show & *dangerous*, as others have pointed out. I don't find the SFWA board convincing in their actions and I find their survey to be a way of passing the buck, at best. Also, we're going to find that the amateur nature of SF media will not be up to the task of parsing all of this 8/8

There's more to say about this open letter, unfortunately, but bear with me, because I think it's important. For example, this response in the File 770 comments by SFWA board member Jonathan Brazee. In essence, Underwood gives cover to SFWA and vice versa. But both their positions are crap. 1/?

Damon Knight: holy machine learning process! it seems that people don't AI slop being eligible for the nebula! Knight: what to do? Knight: i'll feed the question into the bat computer Erin Underwood: never fear, erin underwood is here!

Underwood: in the future, today's modern now-a-go-go writer will use AI for three different things, including idea generation, editing, traslaton, idea generation, cloot, advetismmming, vvooooyyu, gliii73m, anddd yuuu Barker: Barker: are you a bot Underwood: [clipping through wall] i am not a bot

Going through some of my old non-fiction I rediscovered my comparison of Mickey Spillane's work and P.C. Hatter/Stacy Bender's 'parody' line-by-line rewrites. (Plagiarism, frankly.) I'm toying with the idea of doing a more affectionate analysis/rewrite on something public domain or fair use.

Oh I love, LOVE, spotting typos in e-mails I'm sending to writing professionals five seconds after hitting 'send'. Love it.

Ed's on fuckin fire with this one

Like telling Rage Against The Machine to remove the line 'Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me, Motherfucker,' from Killing in the Name Of.

"i asked chat gpt-" well i asked my rat and she gave me a gentle little kiss

Two videos that continue to resonate for me re: Generative AI. The first, from Writing with Andrew, mainly on LLMs, 'Losing your voice to AI', helps remind us that we shouldn't be anxious about using our personal voice. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zetz...

Also given recent events I shall link to my first 'AI Art Project', Doppelganger, where I trained an AI from scratch on my own work, in 2022, to prove that stealing my books and training an AI on it is - to my point of view - an unauthorized derivative work, like a themed version of Monopoly.

A question Generative AI users of all kinds need to consider. AI output can be churned out hundreds of times faster than a human could make it. So it oversaturates everything. It's common. Which means, no matter how good it gets, it's always boring. Why are you okay with being boring?

I highly recommend people read @chuckwendig.bsky.social's response to that open letter to SFWA about AI that's making the rounds. Chuck hits it out of the ballpark with this essay.

Apparently I'm doing this -- my open letter to that open latter about AI in writing and publishing. I emerged from Hibernation Week to write it, so god only knows how much sense it makes. But at least a human wrote it, so that's nice. Bonus: picture of my "cat," sweet baby Boomba.