Some people will die
Sentences that no one wrote
One day it will not be cold out. Today is not that day.
Do you ever think that we were delivered the embodiment of the American id – all of our hubris and ignorance and violence and racism made terrible flesh – sent to dismantle any lingering vestiges of our collective goodness by smashing and pulling on those very levers until they explode or is that just me? Kind of how they torture you in Ironic Hell.
For today's feature Keith Plocek writes about Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions, solipsism, and the permission structure "A.I." gives us to doubt and devalue one another's humanity.
Luke O’Neil
"Lately I have found myself wondering more and more, however, if I’m talking to a machine, particularly when dealing with the written word," he writes.
"I teach journalism at the University of Southern California, and I enjoy working with students on their writing, but I get a pain in my gut, and my heart, imagining how much time I have spent in the past couple years, and will continue spending, on suggesting edits for sentences my students did not write. Sentences that, in fact, no one wrote."
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Read this one by me about "A.I." if you haven't.
Luke O’Neil
This probably applies to all of you. People in possession of human souls who have at least on occasion felt the divine in a work of art. Everything I write myself and everything I love to read or listen to or watch has one bedrock component to it which is this:
Jesus Christ I am alive right now and you are alive right now and someday we will not be but for the duration of this we are both stupidly and beautifully alive.
Or this one.
Luke O’Neil
There was an article in the Times yesterday about how many students and teachers alike are using “A.I.” to both complete and grade assignments
“Writing is one of the most challenging tasks for students, which is why it is so tempting for some to ask A.I. to do it for them. In turn, A.I. can be useful for teachers who would like to assign more writing, but are limited in their time to grade it.”
I can’t come up with the correct metaphor for how that makes me feel. I already used the thing about maggots earlier.
For some reason I keep thinking about an inert sex doll using a dildo. No not in a horny way.
Technically a kind of sex is happening there right? But it sort of removes the main point of the enterprise.
Is that good?
Robert Booth
People of good taste:
Name here checks out.
By the way I'll be doing a reading at my town's nice little book festival coming up in April. Swing by if you're in the metro west area (?) or whatever where I live is called.
There's a chance I might head out to Minneapolis and/or Chicago over the summer so if you run a book store or venue there that might be good for my whole circus of perverts let me know.
Well they've sent ol' Kristi Noem out to the proverbial gravel pit.
The mere fact that you call it 'intersected' tells me that you're not ready.
Here are a couple of her recent appearances in Hell World.
Luke O’Neil
A few years ago I asked what's the most American thing you can think of it and I guess this has taken its place. The secret police performatively praying over fast food hamburgers before a hard day's work disappearing immigrants. They'd call you a hack for making a joke like that. I feel like one just noticing it having happened in real life. ...
God she is so brave. What do you think she prays for?
...Later during a meeting back at the White House with some of the dumbest liars alive Noem delivered some exciting news to the president.
"Noem also claimed federal agents in Portland recently arrested 'the girlfriend of one of the founders of antifa,'" KGW8 reported. "Noem didn't provide any other details but said she hopes to prosecute her and get 'more information about the network and how we can root them out and eliminate them from the existence of American society,' Noem said, referring to antifa."
Everything is so fucking stupid and so dangerous at once.
Luke O’Neil
Next to the display there was a separate old fashioned video screen showing Kristi Noem talking about something or other. How Safe We All Are Now. God these people love to be on TV of any kind. I didn’t listen to what she was saying. She and all of them are setting up something they’re calling ____ ____ down in Florida. It’s a phrase I will not be using. I’m not going to call Trump’s budget by the cutesy fucking name either so I’m sure as hell not going to do it for a concentration camp.
Allllriiiight here's Keith. Some music and movies and other shit to read from me afterwards.
Sentences that no one wrote
by Keith Plocek
Dwayne Hoover goes berserk. He is a car dealer. A local celebrity in Midland City, Ohio. A regular successful guy. Then he comes across an idea so dangerous that it breaks his brain:
“Everybody on Earth was a robot, with one exception — Dwayne Hoover.”
Hoover was already suffering from hallucinations, but the idea that he was the only thinking and feeling person on the planet was just too much, and so he started punching.
Hoover, it should be said, is a fictional character in the Kurt Vonnegut novel Breakfast of Champions, but Hoover doesn’t know that, which is good, because he already has enough problems. Hoover’s main delusion — that he is the only real person in a world full of automatons — is called solipsism, and it has a long philosophical history, going back at a minimum to Rene Descartes, who tried to doubt everything but eventually came around to the idea that he at least existed. (Descartes also tortured dogs and cats, so sure he was that they didn’t have emotions. Real great guy.)
I do not suffer from solipsism. I care, for better and worse, what other people think.
Lately I have found myself wondering more and more, however, if I’m talking to a machine, particularly when dealing with the written word. I teach journalism at the University of Southern California, and I enjoy working with students on their writing, but I get a pain in my gut, and my heart, imagining how much time I have spent in the past couple years, and will continue spending, on suggesting edits for sentences my students did not write. Sentences that, in fact, no one wrote.
Many of my students love to write (in as much as anyone loves to write), and I saw reflections of them in the recent story about the college student who pulled out of the running for a job at the Cleveland Plain Dealer because they disagreed with how the paper used AI to write stories. But not all journalism students are so into the process, and many in other majors care even less. I learned this when helping another department with grading final projects, where I found among their work quotes from Bloomberg, Forbes and the Wall Street Journal that fit the essays in question perfectly, but could not be sourced to anywhere else online.
I had to send those projects back so the machines could try again.
I am starting to ask the question, “Human or bot?” more and more. I know I am not alone. (Like I said, solipsism isn’t my thing.)