Microposts
Ben Werdmuller tells us ‘AI is changing the style and substance of human writing, study finds’:
the software really does change the substance of your writing in what I would call objectively bad ways: it makes it less personal and less emotional, and it actively changes its underlying meaning in the process.
This takes us back to my recent thoughts on people possibly not even understanding their ‘own’ LLM-generated writing.
To the Hackney Empire tonight, to see Bridget Christie’s Jacket Potato Pizza tour which was excellent.
We watched The Man in the Hat 🎥 a few nights ago. An odd, gentle little British/French road movie from 2020. It’s almost silent, at least as far as the main character goes. Others have dialogue, but not a lot. A man goes on the run across France, after seeing what appears to be gangsters disposing of a body. He meets lots of strangers — mostly strange in more than one sense — along the way.
Of course a quick digital lookup answers the question in my previous post: the new meaning of ‘nonplussed’ is its exact opposite.
Literally.
Kottke shares the teaser trailer for Dune: Part Three, and says he is nonplussed by it, ‘both in the traditional and modern senses.’ I was just annoyed by the whispery voiceover.
But: what is this ‘modern’ sense of ‘nonplussed’?
Hari Seldon as an undercover Sigmund Freud?
It’s a long time since I read any of the Foundation trilogy, but this article, describing it as a ‘Jewish Masterpiece’ suggests Freud as partly a model for Seldon:
The Foundation trilogy doesn’t really focus on whether or not the galaxy will be saved. What it does, like Freudian psychoanalysis and Jewish textual practice did before it, is focus on how the past can best be mined to solve the problems that spring up in the present. Both methods prize talk and debate … Asimov’s priests are men of intellect who talk and puzzle and debate over questions and explanations and theories and counter theories and false leads and red herrings much the same way students in a yeshiva talk and puzzle and debate.
It’s an interesting piece, well worth your time, especially in these disturbingly anti-Semitic times. And it makes me want to read the books again.
Good piece by Jonathan Freedland about the disastrous state of the war in Iran. I know I said I felt supportive at the start, and I still want to see the Islamic Republic’s regime fall, and Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis with it. But sadly it isn’t likely this can make that happen.
🎥 Small Prophets is Mackenzie Crook’s new comedy-drama. We watched the first episode tonight. Looks like it’s going to be really good. Interesting similarities to Ricky Gervais’s After Life, in that you’ve got a sad man living alone because he’s lost his partner, and visits his elderly dad in a care home.
I think it’s going to be very different, though, both from that and from Crook’s earlier Detectorists. We watched both of those in the last year or two. I was surprised how much I enjoyed Detectorists when I finally came round to trying it.
In more ‘AI’ nonsense, Grammarly is giving bad advice and tagging writers’ names to it, without paying the writers or even getting their permission.
I tried Grammarly a few years ago and hated it, but that was long before the LLM boom. This is beyond unethical.
I find it deeply weird and surprising to read of authors claiming as ‘mine’ images they requested, or copied and manipulated using ‘AI’. The kind of claim quoted in the linked piece, that ‘it’s all mine.’ When it plainly isn’t.
Writers, you’d think, ought to understand that words have meanings.
Glasgow Central: Building collapses at station as fire causes major disruption - BBC News
Oh no! Glasgow Central! Also my brother and sister-in-law are here and heading back there tomorrow.
To the Arcola theatre in Dalston this afternoon, for Ukraine Unbroken, a set of five short plays about Ukraine since Russia invaded in 2014.
Powerful, moving, a reminder of a time we lived through and that the people of Ukraine are still living through it.
In a world of lies, we need the BBC more than ever, the headline to Polly Toynbee’s article says. It continues: ‘This week could be our last chance to save it,’ which makes for a very long headline, if a very good point.
My favourite quote is this:
The right’s peculiar patriotism seeks to demolish British achievements the country is most proud of: our public broadcasting and our NHS.
The truth is, those kind of people are loyal only to the country of commerce, of corporations, of capital.
The government’s questionnaire on the BBC’s future is here. We should all respond.
Started watching The Miniaturist Season 1 🎥. Very strange household they’ve got there. Big on atmosphere, costumes, and interiors. Not sure where the story’s going to go yet.
Currently reading: Red Menace by Joe Thomas 📚
This is the sequel to White Riot, which I read a surprising two-and-a-half years ago. Ongoing Hackney cop, criminal, and political shenanigans, starting on the day of Live Aid.
Netflix’s Agatha Christie’s Seven Dials 🎥, written by Chris Chibnall, was excellent. Really compelling story that kept us mostly guessing till almost the end.
I don’t know what Agatha did with it, or intended to do with it, but I see what Netflix and Chibnall are doing. They’ve set it up beautifully for an ongoing series. And I for one look forward to it.
We’re in the middle of watching Agatha Christie’s Seven Dials 🎥. Two episodes down, and the last one to watch tonight.
That Bundle is a great character. And Superintendent Battle seems a bit useless and annoying so far. I haven’t read any of the books about him.
Oh, damn, I just read in Ansible: Dan Simmons has died. The Hyperion Cantos are some of the best SF of the late 20th century.
Here’s his Encyclopedia of Science Fiction entry.
Sad. So it Goes.
Sometimes even the best software lets you down. This morning I dropped a quick note in Obsidian about something I wanted to blog about. This evening it’s gone. Not on my phone, not on my Mac.
Can I remember what the idea was? I cannot.