I shared this newish short story with paid subscribers a few weeks back but everyone liked it so much I wanted to open it up for everyone. "One of the good ones." Read it here or down below.

Believing you will receive

This piece will appear in my forthcoming book We Had It Coming. It was originally published at Flaming Hydra. I was out on the porch in the dark with a friend who had stopped by to tell me he was getting a divorce. No no no he didn’t want

Welcome to Hell WorldLuke O’Neil

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I hope none of you are sick of me complaining about "A.I." yet because I am never going to shut the fuck up about it. Especially when there's such a glaring this is what I'm trying to tell you example in the news. Over the weekend the Chicago Sun-Times put out a summer guide. The type of light and fun package that newspapers often do that round up trends and places to go and books to read on the beach and such. I've contributed to many like it in my day. You can probably guess where this one is going though: a lot of it was made up nonsense spun out of whole cloth by some lazy shit head who couldn't be bothered to actually write the articles!

Particularly shameful was the book recommendation section. As 404 Media and others reported only a few of the books mentioned actually exist. How many fakes can you spot in the image below?

A bunch of the rest of the articles in the package include computer-invented lies as well as 404 lays out here.

They tracked down Marco Buscaglia the "author" who said “I do use AI for background at times but always check out the material first. This time, I did not and I can't believe I missed it because it's so obvious."

"No excuses,” he said. “On me 100 percent and I'm completely embarrassed.”

“This is just idiotic of me, really embarrassed. When I found it [online], it was almost surreal to see.”

Brother what do you mean when you found it? Did you not – well I know you didn't write it – but did you not even look at it before sending it off to who I can only presume was an editor of some kind?

"Buscaglia said he was working for King Features Syndicate, a unit of Hearst, to produce content that is sold to media clients across the country," the Sun-Times said in a piece on their own fuck up. It also appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

It comes "two months after the Chicago Sun-Times lost 20 percent of its staff through a buyout program," as Ars Technica pointed out. "In March, the newspaper's nonprofit owner, Chicago Public Media, announced that 30 Sun-Times employees—including 23 from the newsroom—had accepted buyout offers amid financial struggles."

King Features has said they are terminating their relationship with the "writer" and that sounds like a good start to me. If you use "A.I." to publish something in a newspaper it has to come with the professional death penalty. You cannot work in news ever again. Yes I know that's not how it actually goes – so many plagiarists are still thriving – but if it is up to me you are fucking done. Pack up your shit and hit the bricks.

In any case please pay people to write things.

You know who would have loved "A.I." slop by the way? Malcolm X.

Yes that is the very famous and rich publishing company Macmillan. One of "the big five" as they call them. Who presumably have enough money to pay for human-produced art.

For more on Manon Biernacki the rather popular and successful "artist" in question behind the book cover read this investigation into the alleged use of "A.I." in her work.

Manon Biernacki

Putting the AI in painting…

PIXEL’s SubstackPIXEL MAGE

Pixel Mage writes:

To be clear, I don’t think anyone buying Manon’s paintings are doing so thinking she’s tracing AI generated imagery and maybe she’s convinced herself that, by successfully copying the AI source image, she IS creating everything. But there are incredible, talented artists out there who would KILL to get $10k for an original painting, or get a solo show in NYC with Spotify and Manon’s deception is stopping them from being seen.

In fact, she’s even stolen work DIRECTLY from other artists!

NOBODY WANTS THIS!

I also have crippling depression and want to withdraw from the world and that’s why I drink instead of having the computer live my life for me.

Ok so maybe this isn't the worst "A.I." thing of the week but it's been really bothering me on a personal level. I opened Facebook this morning – first mistake I know – and glanced up top at the stories and something caught my eye.

Huh that's strange I thought. That image looks kind of familiar. Did I accidentally press some "A.I." button by accident?

No I did not.

Most of us have hundreds of photos of our partners in our phones right? But among those there might be a handful that really capture them. How they actually look to us. The ones you would save from the proverbial fire. A photo that just truly gets something about their specific humanity. You understand me.

This one I took of M. is that for me. I love it and her very much.

But here against my wishes – although presumably with my terms of service consent – Meta has turned this photo of a beautiful human in all of her individuality into some garbage cartoon fake shit. I fucking hate it. It is offensive to me. Fuck this shit and fuck all "A.I."

Anyway shout out to humanity and to the beautiful M. A person.

She fell on her ass climbing on a jetty at the beach later that afternoon after she had been day drinking with her sister. Even though I told her to be careful so many times!!

There was some work from home discourse going on the other day so I dusted off this old one about how bad commuting sucks.

Commuting is psychological torture

Not doing that commute gave me 15 hours per week of my life back

Welcome to Hell WorldLuke O’Neil

I posted it on Blusky and got a bunch more responses from people.

• I've actually been able to drop off and pick up my kids every day the last few years, and not have to shuffle them into before care and after care every day. And I'm more productive since I can cut out 2 hours of driving every day to sit and stare at a computer in the office. Hope it stays.
• It would be impossible for my job but working from home would improve my life (and health) so much. Just being able to start laundry during breaks, or eat food from my kitchen! Avoiding contagious illnesses! Plus getting the commute time back. I’ll always support other people working from home.
• My previous commute was rage inducing, long, and costly.
  With WFH I sold my car & save hundreds a month on fuel, taxes, upkeep, insurance...
• The pandemic letting the WFH genie free allowed me to save 2 hrs a day commuting, pay off my house, and save enough money I didn't notice when the job ended. If I'd had to commute, I would've rage quit after a few months. Irony is, WFH has been possible for 20 years for stare-at-screen jobs.
• I am literally so lucky that my commute to work as an adult has been either a 15 minute bike ride, a 20 minute walk + 5 minute subway, or just working from home. It's literally the best job perk.
• At my previous job I clawed back a bit of that by cycling to work and back (I'm fortunate enough it was an option). I'm currently fully remote. Having internalized that 2h/day of commute means 20% unpaid time, I can't help but look at salary offers very differently.
• A few lifetimes ago I worked in Joliet and had to commute from the south side 5 days a week. It was anywhere between 2-4 hours depending on traffic. I'd never been so miserable and didn't even realize how bad it affected me (and people around me) until I got a new gig with a 10-20min commute.
• I can’t believe the amount of my adulthood wasted on commuting to and from the office.

This made me tear up.

RIP Chris Cornell gone eight years this week. Read this one if you never did:

Say hello to heaven

The best of Chris Cornell

Welcome to Hell WorldLuke O’Neil

RIP also to George Wendt the actor best known as Norm from Cheers.

Here's another one from the archives about the time I went to Cheers:

I was depressed and I wanted to feel more depressed so I went to Cheers

The rest of the way into Boston from where my bones live

Welcome to Hell WorldLuke O’Neil

Here’s what happened almost five seconds after I walked into Cheers and I know this is going to sound too good to be true but someone yelled out my name. Luke! the guy said and I don’t know if he was trying to do it like they did for the guy on the TV show but I didn’t realize it was actually happening so I ignored it but then the guy came over and turned out it was someone I sort of know and he said I wouldn’t expect to see you here and I was like that is a fair assumption. What are you doing here are you writing a review or something he said and I said uh sort of because you can’t say the truth to people you don’t know that well which is something like I was depressed and I wanted to feel more depressed so I went to Cheers and guess what it worked.

So I drank my Harpoon IPA and ate some baked beans to really lean into the whole thing while You Dropped a Bomb On Me by the Gap Band was playing on the radio and the people around me all stared emptily at the bar that was retroactively made to look more like a fictional bar that was based on a real bar none of which are now or were ever even real. There is a picture of Lord Byron on the wall over there near where the young father was squirting ketchup onto his french fries while his children waved their arms around like little bugs turned over onto their backs and I don’t know what the fuck Byron has to do with any of this it should be a portrait of Borges.

Ready for some whiplash? Listen to a few minutes of the most righteous shit you've heard in a long time about the evils of the Trump administration's treatment of immigrants followed by a sudden pivot to it's the left's fault for too many pronouns. You were so close man. Fuck this dude. Grow up.

Alright here's the short story. Could an "A.I." write this? No. But a guy chain-smoking with a few slugs of Johnnie Walker Black in him sure could.

Believing you will receive

I was out on the porch in the dark with a friend who had stopped by to tell me he was getting a divorce. No no no he didn’t want to come inside and disturb the kids he said. Out here is fine he said. I brought out a couple of ice cold cold ones and listened to a story about the collapse of an entire world. I confess I teared up more than he did. 

Then again it was sudden news to me. You would figure it had settled in for him by now. Hopefully being one of the first people to know about the slow dissolution of his own marriage. 

A person can become accustomed to almost any kind of pain. Novelty is pain’s cruelest device. 

We hugged differently than we had ever hugged. 

A decent enough man will hug his friends routinely albeit quickly and percussively but there is still a kind of hug we keep in reserve for when it is called for. 

A special occasion when the rare bottle is brought up from the cellar and decanted. 

We bullshitted for a while as the night bugs screamed in car alarm. Like someone was breaking into every tree and bush and nest on the block one by one. How panic is infectious like that. How it pollutes. How animals flee. Birds explode into the sky in unison at a rifle’s crack.

No there was nothing to be done about it he said after some interviewing. Wasn’t sure if he wanted there to be anymore. 

I was trying to solve it for him like a 1,000 piece puzzle I wasn’t even at the table doing. Shouting out instructions blindly from the other room. 

Everything was going to be alright he said. 

Trying to reassure me more than himself it seemed like.  

He was walking around downtown earlier trying to clear his head and he saw the funniest thing he said. He passed by a wedding in the park where the groom was reciting the lyrics to Nothing Else Matters as part of his vows. But doing it in the thickest Massachusetts accent he’d ever heard. 

That’s honestly so beautiful to me I said.  

I didn’t know whether to cry or laugh he said. 

He sounded like you he said. 

No matter how far I sang and we each laughed a half of a laugh.

Love is the only thing that is real he said in a suddenly different voice and I wasn’t sure how to respond to that. 

I said damn right. A subdued damn right. A mournful damn right.

Looks like the pope is about to die he said and I said that I had heard that. 

They put out a statement asking for everyone’s prayers he said. But if he can’t even get his calls picked up then what were any of us supposed to do about it? 

Then we talked about how much the Patriots fucking sucked for a while. 

After he had retreated to his suddenly unfamiliar home I went back into my very familiar home and debriefed my wife and told her I was gonna go back and sit out on the porch for a while to decompress. I got myself another can and turned my playlist on shuffle. 

It don't make you do a thing it just lets you.

The next morning my doctor's office emailed to remind me that my upcoming free annual preventative health exam may not technically be free as per recent federal guidelines. The appointment is this week and I'm worried she's going to tell me all my numbers look fine. That there is nothing wrong with me that I have the power to fix. 

Just over the hill deer were busy shedding their velvet. Agitating their antlers against the bark and brush and stripping off the protective layer messily and bloodily. 

Have you seen this? The draped flesh hanging like red rags off of their sharpened points. Doing it over and over again every year. 

Had he not already existed you would have had to invent the Devil Himself if you ever came across such a sight in the woods. 

Maybe that’s where they originally got the idea I don’t know.

Sometimes they eat it too. So that nothing is wasted. And later in the year when the antlers fall off completely other smaller animals congregate and each in turn eat of them for their calcium and protein and to shave down their own constantly growing teeth.  

And it's a chilly dry morning at the end of the mildest summer I can remember and I can't fully appreciate its comfort because it all feels like a bill that will soon come due.

A couple of melancholy and pretty new songs I really like for the road.