Generating Fail

Copy and paste the citation into Google. Receive a list of irrelevant results. Yes, I put the title in quotation marks. It doesn’t matter. I still get a list of papers that are not the one I’m looking for, whose titles contain vaguely related words.

Go to Google Scholar and search for the same citation. Now it gives me the correct paper.

Click the link. It goes to the PubMed entry for the paper.

Click the link from PubMed to the actual journal site hosting the paper.

Do a captcha to prove I’m not a robot, because the journal is detecting too much traffic from my institutional IP address. Squint at nine potato-quality images and decide whether they contain chimneys (?). Click submit.

Apparently I don’t know what a chimney looks like. Squint at another nine potato-quality images and decide whether they contain motorcycles.

This time I did it correctly. Paper loads. Click “View PDF.”

Assuming I have institutional access: PDF opens in a web viewer. Click Download.

PDF now opens in a browser-based Adobe Acrobat viewer. Because apparently, when I clicked Download, I actually meant “view in browser.”

Dismiss Acrobat’s popup offering AI summary.

Dismiss Acrobat’s other popup offering AI summary. I do not want an AI summary. I want to download this goddamn PDF.

Click the Acrobat download button.

A dialog box opens asking me to choose between regular or compressed PDF. Choose regular. What even is a compressed PDF and why would I want one?

File picker opens. Make sure the PDF is getting saved to my Downloads folder. Click Save. Wait for the PDF to download.

Drag the downloaded PDF into EndNote. Pray that EndNote autodetects a DOI.

If it doesn’t: Find the DOI on the journal page. Copy and paste it into the EndNote reference.

Right click on the EndNote reference. Choose “Update Reference.”

Confirm that, in fact, I do want to update all fields of this reference with the info found from the DOI. Which is why I asked for that.

Hit Ctrl-S to save the updated reference, because otherwise EndNote will pop up a dialog box warning me that my changes will be lost. Because autosave apparently doesn’t exist in the year of our lord two thousand and twenty-six.

Lather, rinse, and repeat for all the other citations I need to download.

Take headache medication.

If AI was good for anything, I would be able to give it a paper and say “download me all of these references and put em into EndNote for me.”

we're looking to create an AI policy, and when we were talking about this, my boss (older millennial) was genuinely shocked to hear that younger people do not (seem) to view AI positively (a la the recent commencement speakers being booed)

please rb for larger sample size!

Question 1/3

Thank you for helping with this data collection. Please rb for as big a sample as possible!

Just a reminder that I am available for commencement speeches, birthdays, and Bar Mitzvahs.

Check out the bonus panel on the site.

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SMBC ◆ PATREON ◆ INSTAGRAM ◆ BLUESKY ◆ STORE

That means that all searches as of today (Tuesday, May 26, 2026) are being run through Gemini’s latest model on both the input and output sides, regardless of previous opt-in or -out preferences

Here’s what you’re going to do:

Download and Install Firefox Mobile

Open the 3-dot Menu

Tap on “Settings”

Go to “Search”

Under “Alternative Search Engines,” tap “Add Search Engine”

Name it however you’d like and enter this: https://noai.duckduckgo.com/?q=%s&noai

Tap “Save”

Back in the “Search” menu, go to “Default Search Engine”

Tap on the newly added DuckDuckGo

Back in the “Search” menu, you’ll see Google enabled in your “Alternative Search Engines” - disable the toggle to remove Google results

Happy searching!

Bitch I had google. I could summon the vast expanse of human knowledge with a few choice keystrokes. I could find recipes made by real human beings, written on unknown blogs because their recipe so closely matched my search terms. I could find entire research papers based off of barely remembered tidbits of them.

But now. The search engine that taught me basic particle physics & niche baking techniques & exposed me to brilliant comic artists & bloggers and more, is now a glorified chat bot.

A thing that hallucinates when its programming indicates that inventing is more efficient than copying. A thing that will amalgamate that vast expanse of human knowledge, which it alone can access, into its ever churning soup, but will no longer take me to the sources directly.

Just canceled my account (not that I used it that much). But I won’t permit this. Via @unaminh.bsky.social:

IMPORTANT: For any artists/writers/etc etc, using Linktree to point people to their work, from 5 July, they'll be feeding all imagery you use on your landing page into DALL-E by OpenAI.

"Thesis unclear and supporting arguments contradict leaving reader confused."

I grew up with Andersen's fairytales and many of them has made a permanent home in my heart. The nightingale (or nattergalen, as is the original title) has always been amongst my favourites.

It is the tale of how the emperor of China learns that a great bird exists in his empire and he asks it to come and sing for him. The song deeply touches him and all the people at the palace, and the little bird is celebrated for his voice and song.

One day, a box is sent to the emperor, and within is it a golden mechanical bird, an artificial imitation of the real nightingale. They are asked to sing side by side, but it doesn't work well. The nightingale improvises and goes with his mood, while the mechanical bird can merely repeat how it has been programmed.

Still, hearing the mechanical birds makes the crowd ooh and ahh, and it can sing without mistakes and much more often than a real bird. It is wound up again and again for the amusement of the emperor and the people. The real nightingale leaves discouraged.

But as the time goes on, the mechanical bird starts to break down, and eventually, it doesn't work anymore at all. When the emperor becomes deadly ill, the soft song from a nightingale is all that can save him, but his little wind-up toy cannot help him.

The real nightingale comes back and saves the emperor's life, for it had been so touched when it first sang for the emperor and it made him shed tears. It remembers that first touch of something oh, so special as sharing its voice. The emperor learns the error of his ways.

Gen AI can only ever be an intimidation of the real thing. It is stuck in the same grooves as a mechanical bird. It can do it "perfect" and faster than humanly possible, but it is and always will be an imitation that cannot stand on its own. It might be enough to impress but it is not sustainable.

Only with the real music, art and writing can what is special be perserved. It must be created by living beings. We are able to adapt and change and create stuff outside of set parameters. But it is very understandable that it is highly discouraging to see gen AI spit out music, art or writing that to the untrained, or uncaring, eye is praised.

I reckon that the well will dry up eventually, whether it will be a crash, or behind a high paywall, and everyone who grew accustomed to it will cry out in despair. The mechanical bird is broken. Death will come and sweet song is not there anymore.

The nightingale flew home and continued with his life. He kept singing to the forest, but in another version of the tale, maybe he had stopped singing. It would have been a tragedy for both himself and all the people who eventually realised their folly in depending on a mechanical bird over the real thing.