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Just watched Adam Conover (of Adam Ruins Everything) make such a solid point that I think we should spread far and wide. Yes, having AI write your emails is lazy, sure, but people love being lazy. We need to really emphasize that sending AI emails (or using AI responses on social media, or publishing AI flyers, or or or) is rude.
It's rude. You're making someone take their time to read something you couldn't bother to write. You're telling them they were so unimportant you couldn't be bothered to actually take the time to say something yourself. And frankly, you're lying about it while you're at it.
The above is doubly true if the content of the email is something that will be important to the person receiving - especially something that affects them negatively. They see that this thing that affected them so much didn't matter enough to you to write it yourself. I was a bystander to such a thing not long ago and it was just awful.
If I may offer the lecturer's perspective on this idea:
Currently, it's marking season for us in the UK. I have an exam board in four hours, in fact, which is where we all go over every profile of every student on our courses, see what results they've achieved, and work out their "decision" - if all is well, the decision is to let them continue the course, or the final degree grade calculated if they're in final year. If it hasn't gone well, the decision is about whether they get to rework the pieces that failed, resit exams, repeat the whole year, or be required to withdraw.
And, as has been the case for the last two years, the profiles are now littered with plagiarism investigations. Every one of those - every single one - will have come in as an assignment that the lecturer received, and started reading, and then with a sinking feeling thought "This isn't your work." Every one had to go to an academic misconduct hearing. Every one is an enormous draw on time and resources, including the emotional reserves of the lecturer.
And I know that's not the main issue! I know in the grand scheme of things, our feelings aren't the most important part of this equation! But as we're talking about rudeness, let me explain:
Firstly, the work itself. You begin reading, you see it's AI. Contractually, we have to read it anyway, and give feedback on why it's shit, and what makes it bad, and that is absolutely fucking soul destroying. Most students who use AI are doing so because they've managed to train their brains to find reading something boring abhorrent, and they want to skip that part; but a ChatGPT-generated report is bland, vague, and utterly devoid of any passion, insight or personality. In short, it's boring. You simply passed your boredom on to us.
Secondly, regardless of your personal feelings about the assignment, it at least had a purpose. It was there to stretch you, and make you think about the topic so you could learn about it, and to test that learning so we can all make sure you have actually learned what you need to. But the slop you handed in, that I now have to mark? What's the point? Literally what is the fucking point of me marking it? You didn't even write it. None of the feedback I'm obligated to give means anything to you. I'm marking ChatGPT, and it can't read.
Which means, not only is it fucking boring, it's actively pointless. Ask anyone in the world what a boring but pointless obligatory task does to your mood. Imagine that.
Thirdly, the misconduct hearing. Because listen, again, the lecturer's feelings here are, once again, not the main point. Students who cheat like this aren't doing so because life is hunky dory. They're stressed and overwhelmed and struggling, and they think they've found a magic way out, and so being pulled into a misconduct hearing - where the best they can hope for is to have to redo the whole piece for a capped mark, on top of all the rest of the work they have (functionally, a bonus assignment), and the worst is expulsion - is a mental breakdown-inducing experience. That, obviously, is the biggest issue.
But, the lecturers know all that, which means we know what we're triggering if we do report it. I cannot tell you how upsetting it is to receive a slop assignment, realise what it is, and then have to make the call to report it. I know damn well how upsetting that's going to be for you. I know how stressful and painful that's going to be. I know this might mean you're going to be thrown out of university. In some cases, I know it means you will be.
I know I could look the other way to spare you that
And oh, that gets tempting. When things are really bad for you, and I see you struggling, and this is your third strike; fuck me but it's tempting to pretend that I can't tell.
I cannot do that.
Which brings me to number four: the soul-bleachingly fucking horrible ordeal that is the misconduct hearing itself. Most people are non-confrontational; I'm no exception. I also simply do not enjoy a sobbing, panicking student sitting in front of me, telling me about how stressed and scared they are and how they're terrified they're going to fail. But that's how these things go.
Our most recent example is an international Masters student. I don't know the particulars for him; but I do know it's not uncommon in his part of the world for families to go into obscene debt, often to loan sharks, to send their kids to UK universities. Failure means more than just academia for him. Having to sit through him turning white and quietly begging us to give him another chance before he left in tears he tried to hide from us was, obviously, much worse for him than us; but it was honestly traumatic. Even now, two weeks later, I can't get it out of my head. There's nothing we can do; but, I feel guilty anyway. I could have looked the other way.
(It wouldn't have passed anyway. It was terrible. But at least he'd probably be allowed a resit - we're still waiting on the outcome of this one, but he may well be withdrawn)
To bring this back to the point of the post:
I know my feelings aren't really the ones that matter here. I do know that. But, every time a student chooses to use AI to write an assignment, all that is what happens behind the scenes. My job nosedives into being shit. Whether it's reading the boring slop, having to write pointless feedback, or making the upsetting decisions to report it when I know what the consequences will be and then having to deal with the guilt, my job that I love suddenly becomes shit. And that, actually, among the many other things it is, is fucking rude.
okay, you know what? Running away shouldn’t be a crime. It shouldn’t be dangerous, either. Any kid should be able to leave their parents if they want, for any reason. No I’m not kidding.
“But Rue, where will these kids stay? Do you want them on the streets?”
of course not. In an ideal world, a kids would have multiple adults other than their parents they could look to for care, but I recognize that that will never be a reality for every single child. So: youth shelters, if they have nowhere else to go. There should be clean, warm shelters where anyone under 18 can stay for as long as they need, no questions asked. (And of course shelters that aren’t just for kids, but we’re talking about youth rights right now)
“But Rue,” I hear you say, “what if some moody teenager runs away after an argument?”
First of all, I’d rather a thousand moody teenagers run away than one abused child be trapped. Second, so what if one does? A kid needs time away from their parents, so they leave. The vast majority of them will get some time to cool down and then go back home, and if they don’t want to go back, period? Then nine times out of ten, they have a good reason. (Because yes, as hard as it is for you to believe, kids are humans who have common sense.)
“Okay, but what about the one time out of ten the kid doesn’t have a good reason?”
Then the kid doesn’t have a good reason. It doesn’t change anything. If someone wants to break up with their partner because of something stupid, you wouldn’t say they legally shouldn’t be able to. (And if you would, then you’re just a bad person.) No one should have to be in a relationship, romantic or otherwise, that they don’t want to be in.
My old person take today is that I feel like people have normalized being on your phone every single moment including when you're spending "quality" time with others so much that they're defensive if someone isn't ok with it. Yes, you have a problematic relationship with your phone and social media if you physically cannot put it down for a couple of hours to like, have dinner with your friends. It's a show of respect for other people's time and energy as well as important to be present and connect with people around you. Your parents who told you no phone at the table were right for that one.
piggybacking off this post by @aduckwithears: what if the bookshop was noah's ark 2.0, but for everything?
what if they end up in the shop after everything has been erased, only this time crowley thinks: was the place always this big? it’s more of a maze than he remembers, now that he’s properly looking. rows and rows of shelves twisting and turning in a dozen labyrinthine directions. staircases spiraling up to nowhere. hallways branching off the foyer like tree roots, that’s new.
aziraphale emerges from the bowels of the shop, successful in his quest for cocoa. a warm drink at the end of all things, how painfully british. as far as crowley can tell, nothing has survived; not the earth, or alpha centauri, or any distant stars and nebulas clinging to the skin of the universe. not even light, the fastest, most fundamental thing in all of creation. but somehow, fortnum & mason has. somehow, aziraphale’s chintzy mug embossed with the words HOT STUFF in blazing cherry red above a little cartoon devil has.
“don’t ask,” he says, pushing it into crowley’s hands.
crowley opens his mouth, several questions and a taunt or two already lined up in the wings— and that's when he sees it.
oh.
that’s definitely new.
“angel.”
“it was a gift, if you must know, white elephant gone horribly, horribly wrong, and then i couldn’t bring myself to donate it, one can never have too much drinkware—”
“aziraphale, shut up a moment, would you, and look.”
to the angel’s credit, he shuts up and looks.
memory is a funny thing, unreliable, easily eroded. crowley would have sworn, cross his char-blackened heart, that the tree was taller. in his mind, the branches extend like reverent hands towards the heavens, heavy with fruit, wide and green and swallowing up the whole sky. he is very small, beneath it.
aziraphale’s hand finds his shoulder. “oh.”
“yeah.”
“well, that’s…certainly a design choice. did we…?”
“who else? we’re all that’s left.” but no, that’s not quite right. the dickens. crowley scoops it up, flips it open, then keeps flipping, eyes dancing over pages that are no longer empty.
next to him, aziraphale frowns into his mug. “but how? if this is some sort of, of…cosmic leg-pull, i confess i’m failing to see the—” his face goes blank, then lights up like a christmas tree, a study in giddy. “oh! oh, of course. even the dickens.”
“it was you.” crowley takes his time with the words, feeling each one rush through him. an equal yet opposite kind of flood. “you named him, and it brought him back.”
they gaze at each other, stunned.
“we need more books,” says crowley, at the same time that aziraphale declares, “we need more cocoa.”
and so it goes. they start with the classics, squabbling over semantics (“for the last time, crowley, twilight does not count. i don’t care how many copies were sold worldwide.”) they brave the jeffrey archers. they pore over encyclopedias, scraping their teeth on words like lithospheric mantle, reveling in the euphony of sonoluminescence. and something peculiar starts to happen, a sort of field of dreams situation.
people start happening.
they’re the only thing that could, really. if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear, does it matter? the tree was there; the knowledge was there. it was real. it existed, in spite of. because of. what use does humanity have for a book that tells them, yes, you can be, i will allow it, i will permit it. we create our own mythos, simply by living, by looking at the rorschach blob and finding joy in the mess, beauty in the mundane. you’ve seen the post: forty-thousand years ago, humans stenciled their handprints on the wall of a cave, and this morning, my niece learned to fingerpaint.
so yes, people start happening. friends curl up in the shop’s back room, trashing oprah’s book club pick of the month. lovers spin in a slow circle beneath the oculus as fred astaire croons from the gramophone. someone brings up the duct-taped banana (“how fucking pretentious. anyone could do that shit.” “yeah, but they didn’t. this dude did. in this essay, i will—”), and someone else says, have some art nouveau, maybe you’ll calm down, and the far atrium is suddenly a tribute to klimt, bursting with geometric golds and ornamental greens. in the foyer, a young man teaches amateur card tricks from a folding table that aziraphale will swear up and down isn’t his; the tag on his jumper reads, hi, my name is josh. here, a neolithic wheel. there, a 7th-century chaturanga board. paul blart: mall cop, wedged between the self-helps and memoirs. people begetting creation begetting people, an ouroboros of abracadabra, creating as they speak, until the bookshop is overflowing with it. bursting at the seams with humanity. the world is remade here, in the gaps between stanzas of that shitty poem you wrote when you were twelve, in the canned laughter on your best friend’s favorite sitcom. i am trying to get the seas back on the maps, where they belong. i am trying to love the world back to normal. we survive through storytelling, that ineffable collision of necessity and ingenuity, anchoring the world like the roots of a great tree. we tell stories to remind ourselves that we are alive. we are here.
slowly but surely, the void beyond the bookshop’s windows begins to brighten. human hands stitch the universe back together. and a small eternity later, crowley and aziraphale pull the stream of time around themselves like a cocoon, and rest.
“there’s nothing to forgive, you know,” crowley says. “i know i was flippant about it before, but the truth is— we were both a little bit right, in the end. weren’t we?”
“and a little bit wrong,” aziraphale agrees.
there is sunlight, their time-adjacent bubble. it catches in aziraphale’s cloud of curls, limning him in gold. not a halo, but a frame. the contour of a face and form freely chosen. every day for the rest of our lives, we’ll get to choose, crowley will think, the realization settling just behind his ribs. how about that.
he sees it, the moment aziraphale realizes it too.
“actually i take it back.” crowley grins, and the space between them contracts, then shrinks, a star collapsing. “yeah, i’d like an apology for the pointy teeth. my culture’s not your costume, angel.”
aziraphale’s smile is luminous. “crowley. beloved.”
“hm?”
“shut up a moment, would you, and kiss me. properly, this time.”
“such hard work,” says crowley, and he does. there might be supernovas. maybe another big bang. nobody is around to see it, celestial, infernal, or otherwise, but that’s alright. it exists, it has always existed. here, in the kitchen, loving the world. steadfastly loving.
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proud victim of the tumblr accent. it's fading out of public consciousness as the tik tok accent takes precedence; a linguistic evolution that makes the tumblr accent 85% funnier to unsuspecting civilians. it's like releasing a disease on a non-inoculated population. coughing baby versus hydrogen bomb.
once my therapist said I used very uncommon and creative phrases and adjectives and i just did not have the heart to tell that Old Lady From A Foreign Small Town that I was translating tumblr speech into our language. so I was like yeah... must be from the books I read...
like girl we have an army of scholars over at tumblr.com crafting our language it's not just little old me I swear
I once called a colleague's Borzoi a beautiful Gentle Alien, assuming the term had long since become commonplace outside of Tumblr, and discovered when he burst into delighted laughter at the term that it Had Not. I had to explain to him that I'm not a comedy genius, just repeating a niche meme.
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So I remember reading about this study in grad school where they have a bunch of clinically depressed people and a bunch of non-clinically-depressed people a game that was partially chance and partially skill, and asked them to estimate how much control they had over the outcome.
The depressed people were far more accurate in estimating how much influence their actions had on the outcome of the game compared to their nondepressed counterparts, who consistently overestimated the effects of their own choices on their chances of winning.
Then I remember this other study (CW animal testing) where they put rats in a bucket of water that they couldn’t get out of, so they’d have to swim. There was a fairly consistent point at which the swimming rat would falter, and stop swimming, fated to drown.
Except that that’s when the researchers would pull the rat out of the bucket, give it a nice rest warmth and a meal.
When those SAME rats who had been rescued before were put in the same situation again, they swam much LONGER than they had before.
Why? The risk was the same either way- drowning. You’d have thought that the fear of drowning would keep them swimming to their maximum length no matter what.
The researchers conclusion was that the rescued rats had something they hadn’t had the first time- they had more hope. A miraculous rescue could come, and that let them swim for longer, just in case.
I think we do microdose delusion because sometimes that little overestimation of our chances, of our luck, keeps us swimming that little bit longer, just in case something good happens. And sometimes, that little margin really does make the difference.
“All right," said Susan. "I'm not stupid. You're saying humans need... fantasies to make life bearable."
REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.
"Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—"
YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.
"So we can believe the big ones?"
YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.
"They're not the same at all!"
YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME...SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.
"Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point—"
Was driving with my grandmother and in broken English she says “no eyes… no nose… no face. Don’t trust.” To which I looked around wildly in search of this omen of ill portend.
speaking of volcanology i am at my LIMIT with people thinking that yellowstone is "overdue". Its not fucking pregnant. if it ever erupts again we'll have decades if not centuries of warning. whenever theres "increased activity" there it means something vibrated a bit more or something.
and while we're on it the eruptions happening rn are also not out of the ordinary. what kilauea is doing is not a cause for alarm. volcanoes erupt all the time its a part of our planet I am losing my mind
#fun fact: yellowstone has to replace their roads fucking constantly because of how much the magma shifts!#they rise and fall like frost heaves except much more extensive and it cracks any concrete or asphalt all to hell#i only lived there for like two years and the road was repaved twice#this is why so many roads in the park are gravel. they might be annoying but at least they don't have to rip it up every summer.#anyway.#my point being that we have kind of a good eye on the yellowstone situation because that kind of fuckery happens all the time#if/when it blows we're probably going to have lots of notice#science!
something delightful about a national park actively resisting being paved at all. fuck em up girl, be free
My partner made this comic, and it is beautiful and amazing, and you’re all missing out by not seeing the original on paper because it’s even prettier there!
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