People using Chrome may want to know about this. To disable the new default AI mode. Type chrome://flags in your address bar. Search for AI mode in the search box below and disable the three options displayed.

Any freelance editors available that can be hired to help me chop 10k-15k out of a horror comedy novel? Got a *very* positive response from an agent but the length of the work is the issue (currently 110k on a horror/comedy, need to get closer to 90k-95k).

This from 404 Media is inaccurate. The change at arXiv applies only to two types of CS papers, literature reviews and position papers, not original research. Those papers were already very limited by arXiv policy. blog.arxiv.org/2025/10/31/a...

The layout of this paper is expert level trolling! journals.uc.edu/index.php/vl...

Do I know any freelance editors who specialize in sci-fi horror? Someone asked me for recommendations, and I'd love to refer them to the right editor (which is unfortunately not me).

#Edibuddies I've made a new feed that loosely attempts to capture posts by editors & proofreaders for editors & proofreaders. If you follow the old one, please switch to this new feed. bsky.app/profile/did:...

I'm usually somewhat "meh" about ToS panics, but this wording from academia .edu seems a bit beyond the pale. I just cancelled my (mainly unused) account there.

I got tired of mashing together tools to write long threads with 𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐡 𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑚𝑎𝑡𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔 and ℳα†ℏ—so I wrote La𝑇𝑤𝑒𝑒𝑡! It converts Markdown and LaTeX to Unicode that can be used in “tweets”, and automatically splits long threads. Try it out! keenancrane.github.io/LaTweet/

How do you cite generative AI in #APAStyle? This week on the blog: updated guidance for citing ChatGPT, Gemini, and other generative AI tools! 🔗 apastyle.apa.org/blog/cite-ge... #APA7 #AcademicWriting #CiteYourSources #CitingAI #CiteAI

UNLIMITED VELOCITY

#editors — here's something (else) coming from Microsoft to f'up our workflows.

"If your supply chain uses AI coding, you should assume it’s dangerous trash put out by morons. If any of your upstream dependencies has a .cursor folder, you need to assume they’re not competent, and remove that dependency pronto."

Hey Firefox users.

Agentic artificial naïvete. Billions of dollars to make a browser extension that autoclicks on phishing links.

My video about how LLMs are not search engines has led to many, MANY comments telling me that I should be using Perplexity. Some insisting that Perplexity does not hallucinate. Out of a list of 26 papers it just provided me (in "Research" mode) 4 were real. FOUR. 85% hallucination rate.

Another example of why the attack surface of LLMs is infinite: blog.trailofbits.com/2025/08/06/p...

Is “in order to” deadwood or just resting? Before you cut this common phrase from your writing, here’s what editors and usage guides want you to consider; zurl.co/5GsNe #WritingTips #CopyEditing #Editing #Language #Usage #RightTouchEditing

kind of a shot in the dark here, but anyone know of reputable freelance editing platforms (e.g., places where freelance editors can find clients)? Like the equivalent of Wyzant for tutoring, for example

A concrete example of what I mean when I say AI cannot summarize. You actually have to be able to read and comprehend something before you can take the active step of interpreting it to summarize. AI cannot read, comprehend, or interpret.

Today in misleading summaries: The Adobe report discussed in this @sejournal.bsky.social article doesn't show "77% of Americans report using ChatGPT as a search engine..." (though to be fair, that is one of the report's "key takeaway" bullets). The sample is 1000 Americans *who use ChatGPT*.

#American #editorial #freelancers, see my new #blog post to find 2 important posts by @freelancersunion.bsky.social. You need to know how the horrid new #law will affect your #healthcare & #tax #returns. I strongly recommend do planning with your #accountant. tinyurl.com/49p27wsd

The thing about Grok isn't just that it's a Nazi, it's that it tells on all the other LLMs. Outsourcing critical parts of your brain/workflows/team to systems tuned in more subtle ways by companies that may not share your values is just as risky as obvious bias or hallucination

English needs a tense to describe an action that will happen in the future but should have already been started. Perhaps past perfect aspirational?

A recent post about a library publishing guidelines on citing genAI got me thinking about when that might be appropriate (rarely) or not (almost always), and what those cites should look like when they are needed. www.wordsbywes.ink/a... #AcademicSky #AmEditing

Don't use genAI for summarization, example # n+1.

The Altman-Amodei law: the less you know about what good should look like, the more confident you are that GenAI outputs look good.

A great thread of tips for picking a freelance editor. I agree with most of the points here, and the differences are probably because we edit in different fields.

For Zotero users, the Android app is finally out of closed beta. It supports saving papers directly from the browser or other apps, which takes several steps out of my workflow for increasing my TBR pile. www.zotero.org/blog/...

First, Caligula posted that Incitatus had gone crazy...

If you're thinking of asking ChatGPT et al. to critique or your writing, read this first. The whole thing.

Earlier this month, the Copyright Office issued the third part of its report on on AI: this one covering how generative AI may infringe on copyright and whether that's fair use (short answer: maybe, maybe not). I have a new article up summarizing the report. www.wordsbywes.ink/a...

Oh cool, it looks like I slept through the Overleaf outage.

The one thing that an LLM can do that a human can't do is _not be held liable_, either in a legal or moral sense. It's why so many companies want to use it to, say, deny coverage or process claims. Because then, when mistakes are made, there's no one to hold responsible.

I just saw this on LI: yet another study showing that LLMs embed/amplify human biases in the training data—this time in resume screening. Yet this is what Trump, Musk, and DOGE want to use to rewrite things like HUD regulations and to replace human support agents. www.brookings.edu/ar... 1/2

LLMs are nothing more than models of the distribution of the word forms in their training data, with weights modified by post-training to produce somewhat different distributions. Unless your use case requires a model of a distribution of word forms in text, indeed, they suck and aren't useful.

As a culture, we don’t teach nearly enough media literacy and critical interrogation of sources, but if there aren’t sources, it’s not possible to interrogate them, and with LLMs, sometimes, even if a source is cited, it’s unreliable. The algorithm is not and never will be capable of discernment.

Great thread on the problem of sourcing (or rather lack of sourcing) in LLMs.

“On “secret” radio stations nationwide, a decades-old news service has survived the move to digital” #radio www.niemanlab.org/2025/04/on-s...

I've just updated this page with several more resources for finding rescued government data in archives.

LazyWeb (lazysky? blue haze?) request: anyone know a good freelance editor with bandwidth? Specifically someone who can help get a bunch of marketing and tutorial content out the door for my teeny little web agency’s grand debut.

My latest aspires-to-be-monthly newsletter went out the door this morning with an essay on banning words and some interesting reads from others. Click through if you're interested. www.wordsbywes.ink/n...

The problem with most machine-based random number generators is that they’re not TRULY random, so if you need genuine randomness it is sometimes necessary to link your code to an external random process like a physical noise source or the current rate of US tariffs on a given country.

lol holy shit Marcus @malwaretech.com

"Sheryl, why aren't you using AI in your practice?" (That's a real email I got today) Because I don't want a planet destroying theft machine to invent a case that doesn't exist and have me sanctioned? Because if I have to make sure a statute actually exists, I might as well do the research myself?

Damn, the price of torches and pitchforks just went up

Just found out thanks to the latest update that Firefox has "AI" features. Here's how to switch them off.

The Impact Map or Federal Cuts Tracker Map is finally live‼️ Check the 🗺️ out theimpactproject.org/the-impact-m... Explore how federal cuts are affecting your state or community and share this WIDELY 🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼

This @npr.org article is good, but makes one key mistake: it doesn't just take 2/3 of Congress to change the Constitution. That's what it takes to propose an amendment. That then has to be ratified by 3/4 of the states.

Writer/academic friends: have you ever hired a freelance editor to help you with a project? how did you find/connect with them? Do you know of someone great for hire?