Each week (or so), we’ll highlight the relevant (and sometimes rage-inducing) news adjacent to writing and freedom of expression.
This week: AI continues its hostile takeover of creative labor, Spain takes a stand against digital sludge, and the usual suspects in the U.S. are hard at work memory-holing reality in ways both dystopian and deeply unserious.
OpenAI (ChatGPT) announced a new AI model trained to emulate creative writing—at least, according to founder Sam Altman: “This is the first time i have been really struck by something written by AI.” But with growing concerns over unethically scraped training data and the continued dilution of human voices, writers are asking… why?
Spoiler: the result is yet another model that mimics the aesthetics of creativity while replacing the act of creation with something that exists primarily to generate profit for OpenAI and its (many) partners—at the expense of authors whose work has been chewed up, swallowed, and regurgitated into Silicon Valley slop.
But while big tech continues to accelerate AI’s encroachment on creative industries, Spain (in stark contrast to the U.S.) has drawn a line: In an attempt to curb misinformation and protect human labor, all AI-generated content must be labeled, or companies will face massive fines. As the internet is flooded with AI-written text and AI-generated art, the bill could be the first of many attempts to curb the unchecked spread of slop.
Project 2025 is moving right along—alongside dismantling policies and purging government employees, the stage is set for a systemic erasure of language (and reality). Reports show that officials plan to wipe government websites of references to LGBTQ+, BIPOC, women, and other communities—words like minority, gender, Black, racism, victim, sexuality, climate crisis, discrimination, and women have been flagged, alongside resources for marginalized groups and DEI initiatives, for removal.
It’s a concentrated effort at creating an infrastructure where discrimination becomes easier… because the words to fight it no longer officially exist. (Federally funded educational institutions, research grants, and historical archives will continue to be affected—a broader, more insidious continuation of book bans, but at the level of national record-keeping, reflective of reality.) Doubleplusungood, indeed.
Fox News pundit-turned-Secretary of Defense-slash-perpetual-drunk-uncle Pete Hegseth has a new target: banning educational materials featuring the Enola Gay, the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. His reasoning: that its inclusion in DEI programs constitutes “woke revisionism.” If a nuke isn’t safe from censorship, what is?
Things are a little shit, sure. But even in the ungoodest of times, there are people unwilling to go down without a fight.
Archivists, librarians, and internet people are bracing for the widespread censorship of government records and content. With the Trump admin aiming to erase documentation of progressive policies and minority protections, a decentralized network is working to preserve at-risk information in a galvanized push against erasure, refusing to let silence win.
Let us know if you find something other writers should know about, (or join our Discord and share it there!) Until next week,
Implicit or implicit enumeration of uncountable things (example: taking inventory of the fucks which one gives)
Suggesting the divisibility of things which are not customarily thought of as able to be subdivided (example: “six whole people”)
Using words that aren’t numbers as numbers (example: “one William dollars”)
Technically correct but contextually misleading estimates (example: looking at a group of several thousand things and observing that there are “at least three”)
Incongruous qualifiers for apparently simple sums or tallies (example: she was twenty-seven years old, not counting 2014)
I love all of these, plus I would like to propose two additional, both things that I do on the regular:
6. Comparing a stated number to a somewhat larger number in a context where this adds no information. (example: “I found 50 dollars!” “Wow, that’s almost 60 dollars!”)
7. Improper use and conversion of units. “I’m turning 21 tomorrow!” “Wow, that’s 69.8 in Fahrenheit!”
if I may add a couple of my personal favorites:
8. Saying “maybe more!” when someone very clearly states an exact number, ie, “I have $2.45 on me right now.” “maybe more!” “no, just… just $2.45”
9. dismissing a legitimate fact because the method used to confirm it is also completely legitimate: “it looks like there’s 75 copies of this book in here.” “I mean sure, if you count them.”
Quote from the recent suggestion of adding a code of conduct to the librwolf project:
“Until then though, it should be clear: I’m very opposed to ‘keeping things apolitical’, because keeping things apolitical / trying to have a (false!) balance is taking sides and is political: it sides with the oppressors.
So LibreWolf should definitely be considered a 'very woke’, and certainly quite political project, where queer- and transphobia, racism, ableism, antivax stuff, etc. are not tolerated. I’ll gladly see a hundred racist people be pissed and leave if that makes only a single person from a disadvantaged / minority group feel safer.”
Honestly really cool, might make the switch to librewolf, especially after the recent Firefox stuff.
I keep seeing people put accommodations for people with epilepsy on the same level as sensory accommodations for autism and like… no??? Obviously both are important but epilepsy can kill people, SUDEP is a thing. If you expose someone with photosensitive epilepsy to strobing lights they could suffer permanent brain damage or die. Epilepsy is a condition with physical, sometimes deadly consequences. I’m not sure how many different ways I need to say this before it sticks, but epileptic seizures are physical neurological phenomena that can cause lasting neurological damage or death. Epilepsy can kill you. You can die from epilepsy.
I’d like to co-opt this post and complain briefly about how irresponsible hypno pages/posters will bombard people with WRETCHEDLY flashing/strobing images/spirals. Your lazily slapped together Ai BS slop could actually harm someone. Tag your shit or find a way to format your post so that it isn’t potentially harming someone
told my girlfriend that if she proposes i want a secondhand wedding ring. i explained i don’t want to contribute to a vanity-based industry like diamond mining, and that it would be important to me to continue marriage traditions in a way that causes minimal environmental and personal harm. she asked me if i was just trying to roll the dice on obtaining a haunted object, and i told her i can want two things.
Titanium not only is crazy durable, but it noo magnet! Thas wy Dock chok jjiun spi; surgyr ad pater noster, qui es in cœlis; sanctificetur nomen tuum: Adveniat regnum tuum; fiat voluntas tua, sicut in cœlo, et in terra. Panem nostrum cotidianum da nobis hodie: Et dimitte nobis debita nostra, sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris: et ne nos inducas in tentationem: sed libera nos a malo.
dude got hit with the ol’ Lorum Ipsem beam😞
Fun fact! Titanium is often used for medical implants because it’s *dodges lorem ipsum beam* because it’s strong, nontoxic, won’t corrode inside the body, and best of all, *dodges* bone will directly grow onto it! This is called “osseointegration” and it means that your titanium artificial hip, dental implant, or whatever will have greater *dodges* greater mechanical stability and will ARRRGGH! aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit!
It is with the heaviest of hearts that I bring you sad news today. Murphy, the eagle who incubated a rock (and later raised a foster eaglet after his rock “hatched”), passed away at age 33 (almost a decade longer than long-lived wild eagles!). A tornado hit his local area. It’s believed he sustained blunt force head trauma, likely from spooking during the high winds, as his cage and fellow eagles were unharmed.
Murphy is survived by his foster son, Baby 23-126, who was successfully released into the wild, and a second foster eaglet he was still caring for; this eaglet is expected to be able to be released as well.
I know a lot of people on Tumblr enjoyed seeing his story, and I know we will remember him fondly.
i dont care about validity i care about my civil rights
“can you be trans without dysphoria” “can you be an aromantic lesbian” “can bisexuals only date one gender” i literally do not care. in what states and countries are we protected from discrimination.
dude stop trying to garner context and character traits from the objects in my room i know youre doing it. stop clicking on shit im not gonna tell you about - oh that picture is of me and my dad. yeah he’s not really in my life anymore i just keep it around cause im sentimental- DUDE
not proshipper not anti but a secret third thing (person who has a career in the media and, through covering legislative politics, has watched “associating with problematic fiction or entertainment is an indicator of moral degeneracy” rapidly become a mainstream GOP position that they are encoding in legislation to target the queer community under the guise of protecting children, thus coming to the conclusion that positioning the “can people enjoy things that would be immoral IRL in their fiction” debate as a proship v anti fandom debate is akin to pretending that “should we have the death penalty” is a discussion that only matters in Death Note discourse — the extent and manner to which fiction affects reality is an issue that is immediately relevant to today’s US politics, and to summarize my opinions on the matter in fandom terms would be to diminish the ways this debate is affecting america Right The Fuck Now. and i have stopped taking “this person is bad for shipping the wrong anime thing and being horny about it” in any sort of good faith ever since I saw it literally used as part of a GOP smear campaign against a transgender state legislator in an attempt to defend the right from backlash after they used their supermajority in the Montana house to prevent her from speaking on the floor. Anyway I think everyone on this site, especially Americans, could benefit from ceasing to think in proship v anti vocabulary and instead developing coherent political positions on the nature of fiction that do not directly align with current fascist political tactics)
ew yea i used to m*sturbate 🤢 to p*rn 🌽 but now i’m 2 weeks clean and every part of my mind and body is clea-(sees a pebble that looks like a ass and my dick goes off like a shotgun) ouuuuuugggghhhhhhh
There is a child next to me at the clinic I’m doing bloodwork at that is watching ai generated videos of Spiderman farting, without headphones. And I’m trying to keep a straight face but i thought about someone being like oh no it’s stealing jobs from real farting spidermen and my composure is breaking
the problem with autism is sometimes you want to do something (brave) but you need someone to gently walk you through each step so you know what will happen. and people don’t like doing that
i had to phone a taxi today, scary
every time i see this post i think of that person who posted on reddit that they wanted to go to subway for the first time but they were scared they would say the wrong thing so someone gave them step by step instructions for the entire process and what all the choices would be and when they would ask what question and i just think
someone will
someone out there will see you and say “yes. the world is scary. but let me hold your hand and show you how to do it anyways”
everyone needs that someone, and everyone can be that someone
The subreddit r/explainlikeimscared is a surprisingly good resource for this. People are always very kind and thorough from what I’ve seen, and I spend a decent amount of time there giving walkthroughs and answering questions when I know the process.
It’s so funny how the game store used to sell games the music store used to sell music and hot topic used to sell goffic accessories but now they all stock the same anime backpacks and novelty fnaf soap of whatever
Nicole Cliffe has a whole twitter thread about funny/horrifying anaesthesia stories that you should read all of, but this is definitely my favourite
Judging from the way the stripes go, that scarf was knitted sideways. Meaning the person cast on 17 feet’s worth of stitches and knitted those 17 feet back & forth for three inches. I’m in awe.
Therapyspeak overuse is annoying and we take great pains to avoid it in our writing but some of what you guys discuss as such i fear is just normie tier awareness of mental health
people generally have passing concepts of most “major” mental illnesses and miscellaneous related concepts (panic attack, prozac, adderall etc) now are they usually good concepts? no. but especially with depression and anxiety its like probably they should know, we’re like ten years into Instagram Infographic About How Depression Is Not What You Think! world
the “they should absolutely know” doesnt even apply to anythign more complicated than unipolar depression, generalized anxiety, or the really obvious reasons to have ptsd (knife attack or some shit) but its like They would know the words. THey wou.ld.
every other time i boot up a steam game one of my steam friends messages me telling me to fuck off and i’m always confused at first but then i remember what my profile is rn
