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05.03.2026 04:01 β π 1 π 0 π¬ 0 π 0@mkirschenbaum.bsky.social
Critical tech and literary/cultural AI. Also cats, letterpress printing, and tabletop gaming. Professor of English at UVA (Commonwealth chair upon approval). Speaking for myself as a private citizen here. Being rude will get you blocked.
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05.03.2026 04:01 β π 1 π 0 π¬ 0 π 0Itβs likely because itβs late and itβs been a long day, but I apologize, Iβm just not following that.
05.03.2026 04:00 β π 1 π 0 π¬ 1 π 0Congratulations: your experience of writing is *qualitatively different* from the vast majority of what gets written, which is so dreary and workaday that the courts have repeatedly ruled the authors of such work are not authors but employees, nor can they claim copyright or profit from said work.
05.03.2026 03:47 β π 14 π 1 π¬ 1 π 0When you sit down to write an essay or a long overdue email to a friend or even a snappy post for this website, you relish the feeling of the words at the tips of your fingers, tumbling into place like the tumblers in a safe. We say βit clicksβfor a reason, right? Itβs unique and itβs you, right? β>
05.03.2026 03:47 β π 19 π 1 π¬ 1 π 0Most people donβt win prizes for their writing, nor do they aspire to such. That writing is or should be that is itself a historically and culturally conditioned view of what writing is.
05.03.2026 03:38 β π 2 π 0 π¬ 1 π 0This is the needed corrective to the new round of "when humans write it's like music, every word carefully chosen and precisely placed" which is simply not the reality for most people and situations. Much of writing is a tedious task that we have to slog through to simply keep our job/day/etc going.
05.03.2026 02:34 β π 38 π 6 π¬ 3 π 3+1 to everything above. You canβt actually know something about writing in its varied historical and social contexts and cling to the notion that itβs some form of exceptional activity. It *can* be, but that is itself the exception.
05.03.2026 03:14 β π 7 π 0 π¬ 2 π 0π
05.03.2026 01:26 β π 1 π 0 π¬ 0 π 0
Apply to join my team by 3/16!
Be the Library of Virginia's born-digital collections coordinator, leading planning and management of electronic gov/manuscript records. We're looking for a techie archivist type who can help improve access to our born-digital wonders.
$78k-$88k in Richmond VA.
Okay, sorry. Been a long day here. ;-)
04.03.2026 19:26 β π 0 π 0 π¬ 1 π 0
Why this article is cited _in this very thread_.
Honestly, Iβm exhausted.
The warfighters who are currently fighting are not fighting a war.
04.03.2026 19:04 β π 6 π 0 π¬ 3 π 0βfact-based feelingβ is unfortunately an instant classic
04.03.2026 18:58 β π 661 π 128 π¬ 24 π 2Absolutely. (Once again, is/ought.)
04.03.2026 18:58 β π 1 π 0 π¬ 0 π 0Apologies for the nerfed links in this thread. Blame the auto-verification systems.
04.03.2026 18:49 β π 0 π 0 π¬ 0 π 0And on the literary side, you might not like knowing how the sausage really gets made, especially historically. For more on this, see @sarahebull.bsky.social: muse.jhu.edu/article/910951
04.03.2026 18:44 β π 8 π 1 π¬ 1 π 0Computer scientists understood this as early as the 1950s, when we began to see regular experiments with machine-generated poems. For more on this see: read.dukeupress.edu/american-lit...
04.03.2026 18:44 β π 8 π 1 π¬ 1 π 0
The opposite of AI is not poetry or literature.
Most of the writing in the world is not poetry. And, most poetry is itself not very good, indeed often formulaic,
highly stylized, and cliche-ridden. For more on this see: +
A US submarine sinking a lonely, dinky Iranian surface ship an ocean away from the theater of the main conflictβand 9000
miles from North Americaβmakes it pretty clear the US is fighting a general war, without the declaration required by the Constitution. www.reuters.com/world/asia-p...
Rare Book School!
04.03.2026 18:08 β π 4 π 0 π¬ 0 π 0Watching my corner gas stationβs price ticker climb higher by the day, thanks Biden
04.03.2026 17:46 β π 6 π 1 π¬ 0 π 0Itβs neither interesting nor uninteresting but assuming every conversation about writing is about student writing is a category error only academics make.
04.03.2026 17:41 β π 0 π 0 π¬ 0 π 0Iβm not talking about what we tell students.
04.03.2026 17:33 β π 0 π 0 π¬ 0 π 0Yup
04.03.2026 17:02 β π 0 π 0 π¬ 0 π 0π
04.03.2026 16:45 β π 0 π 0 π¬ 0 π 0I think weβre done here donβt you?
04.03.2026 16:43 β π 0 π 0 π¬ 1 π 0Also, if weβre going to scold one another about rereading, you might reread my post and see that Iβm not calling *you* an idealist but rather I think you may be thinking of me as one.
04.03.2026 16:42 β π 1 π 0 π¬ 1 π 0Exactly.
04.03.2026 16:41 β π 0 π 0 π¬ 0 π 0Well, since youβre posting here under a (robotic) pseudonym, I donβt know anything about you at all so π€·ββοΈ
04.03.2026 16:40 β π 0 π 0 π¬ 1 π 0They might, indeed they very well might. What is your point? That thatβs undesirable? Of course it is! Do you think anyone reading here thinks otherwise? But that determination has nothing to do with the reality of how these tools are and will be deployed.
04.03.2026 16:39 β π 1 π 0 π¬ 1 π 0