Volume & Velocity

I just want to catch spelling errors and accidental double spaces and repeated phrases and whenever I use the wrong too/to or affect/effect and shit. But no. They've shoved AI up the ass of every grammar checking software out there and now they all fucking suck and make the most random, obnoxious, nonsensical suggestions.

I get why people keep saying this (and other versions of it like "Use Adobe alternatives" and "Use Google product alternatives."). But here's the problem: I do not create in isolation. Even my own 100% personal projects are getting sent to other people whether it's editors or printers or beta readers and unless every single person in that train is using the same products, things can get wonky.

Libre Office and Word handle formatting differently on the back end, which can completely break documents if you move them back and forth between the two. So if I write in Libre Office but my beta readers are still using Word, when I send them a manuscript for review there's a good chance things won't look right and my beta reader will not actually be reviewing what I sent them.

:| :| :|

They are, I am certain, intentionally programmed that way because the user is supposed to see “errors” coming up every time they write anything and conclude that they Need the AI. That they CAN’T write without the AI. “Look how many things it fixed — I made so many mistakes — I never would have caught all this without the AI.” So they keep using it, because otherwise all their documents will be full of “errors” that they or their human proofreaders all “missed”.

I do a live “fuck Grammarly” demo near the beginning of each semester, where I give it a paragraph from a published work and point out all the mistakes it claims are there, very few if any of which are genuine mistakes of any kind. It also displays that “grammarly score”, which tends to be aggressively low, especially if the text is at all interesting or original — “let’s see what it thinks of some of the stuff you were assigned in high school English as examples of Great Works… ooh, Edgar Allan Poe gets a C, he should learn how to write.”

And, of course, any time you tell it to rewrite something, it can’t come back with “this is already good actually, you don’t need a subscription to Grammarly at all” — if given a text that is already perfectly fine, it will just randomly swap out various words for synonyms. Because it always has to Do Something. If the program makes no changes, you might decide you don’t need it. But if you’re not a confident writer, if Grammarly tells you this synonym is “better”, you’re likely to believe it.

TF Sport’s LM GT3 winning N°33 Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.R in the 2026 FIAWEC 24 Heures du Mans, Le Mans FR. 14 June 2026.

On this day, June 11, 1955, a split-second tragedy transformed motorsport from a glamorous pursuit of glory into an unforgettable, heart-wrenching nightmare

The air at the legendary 24 Hours of Le Mans in France was thick with excitement. Over 250,000 roaring spectators packed the grandstands to watch the world's finest drivers push the limits of human speed.

Among them was Pierre Levegh, a veteran 50-year-old French racer driving a cutting-edge Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR. Levegh wasn't just racing for a trophy; he was driving with a deep personal desire to prove himself on his home soil, chasing a lifelong dream before retirement.

Then came Lap 35.

As Levegh barreled down the main straightaway at an astonishing 150 mph, a slower car unexpectedly veered directly into his path. With absolutely no time to react, Levegh's silver Mercedes clipped the back of the car, launched violently into the air, and flipped directly toward the densely packed crowd.

The impact was catastrophic. The car disintegrated upon striking the concrete barrier, launching its heavy engine block, radiator, and shattered, burning magnesium debris like shrapnel directly through the tightly bunched spectator rows.

In mere seconds, a joyous festival of speed dissolved into an absolute war zone of screams, smoke, and unimaginable heartbreak. Levegh was killed instantly upon impact.

Amidst the blinding smoke, a young French mechanic named Jean wrestled through the stampeding, panicked crowd toward the wreckage. His heart hammered in his chest—his elderly father and teenage sister had been sitting in the very front row of those grandstands. He frantically tore through the burning metal, coughing through the toxic magnesium smoke, desperately calling their names.

When he finally found them, they were tightly holding hands, miraculously shielded from the flying debris by a heavy wooden pillar that collapsed just inches away. They were terrified but alive. As they wept and clung to each other in the ash, they looked around at a tragedy that claimed the lives of 83 innocent spectators and injured over 120 others.

The Le Mans disaster shocked the world, forcing multiple nations to temporarily ban automobile racing and permanently rewriting global safety standards.