We talk a lot about sloppy AI writing tools, but AI has not achieved anything near human capacity for sloppiness. A good example: Here is a thread about an author using gen AI to do a rewrite to make her work similar to another’s - and then forgetting to remove her prompts. Which stayed in the finished book. Because all the other humans involved in the process were no doubt also using AI.
I also really liked that story about how the Chicago Sun Times made a summer reading recommendations list - which they outsourced, and then ended up with a list of several fake Best Books To Read
Love and Robots
You know what’s not artificial, or sloppy? This amazing art that I woke up to this morning.
Yes, that’s Bador and Moku, as drawn by the amazing (and Hugo-winning!) artist Laya Rose. Completely made my day, week, longer time periods.
The switching hour
Are you among the 3.5 million people who bought the Nintendo Switch 2 over the last four days? I got myself a Switch long after they invented the Switch, but immediately after I learned it existed, which was via my author/gaming prodigy friend Lavanya Lakshminarayan, who knows all these things and is my Youth Whisperer, and was in that moment tired of me being an Elderly Moaner about not having played videogames in way, way too long. I am not going to get a Switch 2 until I have finished several of the large and amazing games I bought for my Switch and then did not finish because I was working on books for some reason. So once again I have not played videogames in way, way too long, but I own a Switch, which is very cool.
Also: There is a Legend of Zelda movie on the way?
Baaki Innocent Players ka Murder karte jayenge
One of the reasons why I haven’t been playing with my Switch is that when I’m in fairly intense work mode, and I have been for the last few months, the only thing I have energy for is zero brain effort viewing - like reality TV, which used to be completely trash but now can also be really good? I loved Culinary Class Wars, and The Traitors - devoured the UK version, even saw a bit of the US version which has Alan Cumming being absolutely marvelously over-the-top in a way I doubt K-Jo can ever achieve. There’s a Celebrity Traitors out in the UK sometime soon, but some of the charm of the show was that it was ‘regular’ people playing, and of course in India they’ve gone for an influencer/I Judge Myself For Knowing Who This Is cast straight away. I ended up watching Bollywood Wives because Twitter hadn’t died yet and Twitter was just full of Bollywood Wives. But I think I will manage to skip this one.
I’m waiting until I’m done with the current intense project to see Murderbot, and Andor. Loved the books and the first season respectively.
Grimsweet? Yes please
And speaking of books, the always brilliant Kate Elliott has a new one out today! Many congratulations.
Congratulations also to Shreya Ila Anasuya for her book announcement! Really looking forward to this one.
And now the real question
Forget OCD. Do you have Office Chair Butt?
If you are not buying a Switch, is it because you have spent all your money buying Sydney Sweeney’s used bathwater soap at a very high marked-up price?
Back in a bit
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