For me, the question isn’t whether generating art with AI is good or bad. It’s just definitionally impossible. Art is what humans create to express the nonliteral. An algorithm, however much data it has, has no sense of the nonliteral. It might make something that pleases you, but it can’t make art.

The telling thing about that piece for me is that execs thought the pilot skewed "too young". I do not know how else you make Buffy (successfully) other than to make it about teenagers. That was the problem with the last few seasons of the original!

I don't care if this makes me a dinosaur. If I found out that a writer had used a solitary line of AI I would never read them again. If I thought someone had used AI in an email to me, I would never respond or indeed respect them again.

www.microsoft.com/en-us/micros... is it good to build an entire economy and software infrastructure on this

This. The dream of the 90s is dead. Cheap rent enables every kind of creative work and nothing else can substitute for it.

I mean, who knows, right? but if they are d'Artagnan's remains, that's incredible. Shout out to all those who are learning for the first time that he wasn't a fictional character, welcome to the Dumas club. (His portrayal in the novels is pretty fictional, though.) www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Also why do the wizard school fans expect t special treatment? loads of us are Neil Gaiman fans and have managed to stop giving him money. And whatever else you can say about Neil Gaiman he is not actually funding pro-sexual abuse organisations and lawsuits.

An X-Men team of just characters that can't easily pass for human for whatever reason. Engine is what makes them X-Men and not just the Morlocks?

Just the story of his name is one of the coolest things of all time

It's also not acceptable for it to totally rewrite health information that has gone through several rounds of clinical governance and then still credit it back to the original organisation but here we are.

Seeing a Spider-Man/Punisher team-up in the new movie reminds me of my favourite one ever, from the 1991 Punisher gameboy game, because WHAT DOES SPIDER-MAN THINK THE PUNISHER WILL DO WHEN HE GETS THERE?

One thing that AI evangelists seem to assume, particularly legal AI evangelists assume, is that the thinking and analysis is quick, and the writing is just tedious busywork that slows us down. But the writing IS the thinking and analysis. You work out the thinking and analysis by writing it down.

This person is incompetent. In every creative industry I've done any kind of work in, "you are not your audience" is a mantra and expressing personal taste without reference to the actual audience is actively frowned upon.

Even if I ended up never playing it (which is very possible), I'll be backing it anyway because the ambition is off the charts.

Many years ago, while I worked at the British Red Cross, it was Adam Baldwin who sicced a load of US alt right accounts on us because of a made-up Daily Mail story about us "cancelling Christmas".

These newsletters are absolutely incredible and every comic fan should read them.

One day a streamer will have the bright idea of putting Seinfeld up with the laugh track removed and I will be *delighted*.

I needed to do some editing on a pdf and thought I'd just do the free trial of Acrobat Pro to get it done. Jesus Christ, is Acrobat actually the world's worst software? Have Adobe met any real people or thought about what tasks they might want to do? Genuinely shockingly bad.

@ryanbarnett92.bsky.social thanks for the follow-back, really enjoyed your substack, these are the questions I've been wondering about and not seeing any sensible answers to from govt - and also noticed you were also a Dons fan, which is always a recommendation!

I finally lost my shit about so-called AIs, LLMs, enshittification & everything fucking evil that @officialgrammarly.bsky.social is doing. I'm fucking furious, and not just about what 1 company has done. An open letter to Grammarly & the rest of the LLM hype machine www.moryan.com/an-open-lett...

This. AI has hammered home to me how much the purpose of creative work is connecting human brains. If you take that away, it just *isn't good*, inherently, regardless of any other measure of quality. There's a reason why when my kid sees a painting he asks "how did someone *do* that?"

I didn't do as well I thought I would on this, but it's irrelevant, because what I've essentially found is that if you know something is AI it automatically has no value (to my brain anyway). Which is why it's vital AI usage in creative work is called out and credited.

Love this experience by one of the basic income pilot participants in Wales. They got £1,290 a month after tax for two years (about $1,862/mo), and at first they planned to not get a job, but then after getting into the pilot, they changed their mind, because why not do more to get more money?

Please have a play. You are a raven. A creature of myth and legend... or just a big bird, your choice. Eat the gods! Dance with a Dracula! Take Edgar Allan Poe to Alton Towers! Ruin a Zumba class! Drive the M4 w a mythic princess! Get very lost & end up in the wrong game! j2gb9g9f.play.borogove.io

No keeper on the bench is wild. I know an injury or red is unlikely but if it happens, you're done. Negligent.

I mean I don’t think he’s doing it for political reasons but if he can’t make *any* capital with the progressive bloc out of the fact that Blair, Trump, Farage, Johnson; Badenoch and Liz Truss are all attacking him on it, he may as well just resign now tbh

hot take, VAR gets a lot of grief for stuff that's actually just the offside rules being written in a way that over time has completely dragged them away from the law's original purpose

I am absolutely amazed London isn't higher. Although it would be on this list near the bottom if you remove the boroughs added in the 60s acc to the link.

BREAKING NEWS in the world of Sticky Toffee Puddings

‘I remember something Alan Moore told me: "It is so important to reenchant these places that we live in, to actually give back the energies that have been bled out of them. An empowered landscape creates empowered people, and the reverse is also true….”’

Stupidest, least fair game ever, 10/10, would recommend (esp for with kids)

I reposted this earlier, but I'm doing it again. Deadwood was a magic trick: a work of great violence and profanity in which decency and grace are perpetually in reach. It exists out of time and will be true as long as humans survive.

Exceptional piece of writing about TV's finest series.

The far-right are not going to pack up and go home. A significant part of Britain's wealthiest people, their media and their foreign allies have committed themselves to a far-right government. Positive politics is necessary, but also action to defend our democracy.

"And are the woke progressives in the room with us now?"

No!

This isn't really a criticism aimed at Jessica Elgot, but I think the framing of Lab/Green voters as "progressives" is really unhelpful and a product of politics and the real world being unmoored from one another. Most voters have pretty normal, boring values. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

I had to read this a few times to check I really understood it, but if this is genuinely a Labour councillor saying they and their circle are hoping for a Reform win, they should be identified and removed. It's not a game!

I know in the current misinformation environment that denying reality is A Bad Thing, but the Viking helmet horns thing is one of those things where I think "nah, just leave it. It's just better like that." Same with Pluto being a planet. I know it's not. But let's just say it is.

Edging closer to the banter result of Reform minority government with Greens as Opposition.

This is the one.

the lyndon b johnson campaign’s “in your guts you know he’s nuts” response to barry goldwater’s “in your heart you know he’s right” in the 1964 presidential election. all timer imo

Mad that it’s one billionaire scumbag who’s behind these massive-scale evictions in London AND the mass closure of London pubs AND beloved institution the Prince Charles Cinema being in dire straits AND the high street being clogged with cruddy candy shops. A one-man enshittification engine.

OH MY GOD YOU COULD NAME IT PACIFIC GYM COME ON

The modern equivalent of when I was reporting at a major airshow and Airbus had a massive billboard with their new launch covered up with paper until the press conf. Obviously immediately removed it and wrote down the details under cover of dark.

PSA: if you start this, it will loudly shout SINGLE PLAYER, which isn't great if you're in your office.

My brother wanted a London pub crawl. The result? My new Substack post: "Britain Lost 14,000 Third Places. They were Called Pubs. Is Your Local Next?" How private equity reshaped the local, which pubs are most at risk and most importantly what to do about it. open.substack.com/pub/laurenle...

The thing about Casablanca being the greatest film of all time is people don't believe you and then they watch it

Can a LetterBoxd review win a Pulitzer?

I mean, this is the obvious point that noone seems to mention, right?