Rynling R&D

Something else that feels very unsettling is that every single academic journal article I've been asked to review this year has been written partially or entirely by Gen-AI.

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You get why I suspect that this answer was created by Gen-AI, right?

It’s not so much the writing itself, but rather the tone and context. The student’s answer is completely wrong, but it’s written with complete confidence. His answer is something that could conceivably be possible... but again, it’s totally unsupported, not to mention totally irrelevant. So where does the student’s confidence come from? And also, given that he’s apparently unable to read the specified paragraph, where does that smoothness of writing come from? Why does he feel the need to write a perfectly balanced three-sentence paragraph when a simple four-word answer would suffice?

I am so fucking ready for this semester to be over, you have no idea.

I’m going to be salty about fanfic for a second. This is an extended meditation on what I try to do when I write, but also it’s just me being a petty little hater about a common style of fanfic writing that I find annoying, so feel free to scroll on by.

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So I guess my frustration is: why is that sort of bloodless, limp-dick style of writing so popular?

But also: what can I borrow from this style without betraying my sense of integrity as a craftsman?

I had to block some grown adults on Tumblr this morning.

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I swear to god. It's just a drawing of a plant. People will get find anything to get upset about.

Also! Did you know that the city of Chicago named one of its new snowplows Abolish ICE?

I hope all the snowplows stay warm and get some refreshing terrarium time in between the good work they're doing this weekend. 🌿

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I mean listen, I'm not wrong.

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The truth is that, if you really want to support queer creative communities, you're going to have to acknowledge that these communities are making art that might not fit neatly into mainstream commercial marketing categories. And their work is so much better and more interesting for this, honestly.

Large Language Muddle
https://www.nplusonemag.com/issue-51/the-intellectual-situation/large-language-muddle/

But a still graver scandal of AI — like its hydra-head sibling, cryptocurrency — is the technology’s colossal wastefulness. The untold billions firehosed by investors into its development; the water-guzzling data centers draining the parched exurbs of Phoenix and Dallas; the yeti-size carbon footprint of the sector as a whole — and for what? A cankerous glut of racist memes and cardboard essays. Not only is the ratio of AI’s resource rapacity to its productive utility indefensibly and irremediably skewed, AI-made material is itself a waste product: flimsy, shoddy, disposable, a single-use plastic of the mind.

We're now a month into the semester, and I'm working my way through my classes' first batch of reading responses. It's impossible to exaggerate how obvious the computer-generated essays are. How obvious, and how insulting.

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So, to me, this essay isn't wrong, necessarily, but it demonstrates an onanistic obsession with intellectual privilege that runs counter to its stated goal of resisting the encroachment of LLMs into public discourse. As the market for writing shrinks due to lack of funding, building even higher walls around "the literary community" isn't effective praxis.

I finally finished a stupid two-panel comic (this one here) about my fantasy of taking direct action against oligarchs. The no-minimum tariffs bullshit absolutely wrecking the small businesses of indie artists was the straw that broke my back.

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But also, listen. In actual reality, hammers.

Just to get it off my chest: ecofascism is the idea that (a) environmental change is inevitable; (b) only “strong” people will survive the resulting disasters, and (c) this is how it should be. To give an example: It’s okay that people in Texas die during extreme heat events, because if they weren’t poor (and therefore without value as human beings) they would have AC or live somewhere else. Americans often like to give examples in other countries (generally in South Asia, and generally in relation to flooding, mainly in Bangladesh and Pakistan), but climate-related catastrophes definitely happen in the United States.

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Just for shits and giggles (and also inspired by the brilliant fanwork of a friend), I decided to write a few quick stories about Tenna, the villain (sort of) of the recently released Chapter 3 of Deltarune. I thought the idea of shipping him with Spamton, the villain (definitely) of Chapter 2 was funny for a hot second before actually becoming intrigued by the dynamic. What if they were both awful and made each other worse, that sort of thing.

The problem I had initially was how to write Tenna, who we only ever see speaking to an audience. How would his voice translate to a more intimate situation? To get a sense of fandom tastes, I pulled up fic for the ship on AO3 as sorted by the number of bookmarks, which I hoped would filter out most of the slop.

But alas. There is. A whole lot of slop. Very clearly written by GenAI. And people love it. Apparently.

I don't understand this at all. These stories all follow the same beats and use the same vocabulary, and the characters don't speak in their distinctive voices. There's no attempt to engage with the story or lore of the original game, and there's no specificity at all. Why would so many people bookmark fic like this?

Meanwhile, my university has been aggressively integrating GenAI into its software licenses and digital infrastructure, which has been causing huge problems for everyone. To give an example, many incoming students from East Asia or with East Asian heritage can't upload their photos to their university profiles because the software flags them for using AI-generated images. Because all Asians look fake to the algorithm I guess?? At the same time, the East Asian language teachers have been asking the university to pay for licenses for region-specific GenAI tools that might potentially make huge advances in language learning, but the university (which has more money than God) has been ignoring them. Because why would a university want to use GenAI for actual education and pedagogical innovation amirite.

TLDR: This is dystopian and I hate it.