Matt Ruff

Have to keep stopping myself from writing back with tips, like "the numbered gmail address is a dead giveaway" and "make sure you're not offering to help me promote a foreign translation that went out of print years ago."

AI is empowering a new generation of online scammers but it's also making them really lazy.

these Wicked sequels keep getting worse

sliwa got to him, man

Ceci n'est pas une food replicator.

Family Dog Suspected Cause Of Miniature Chuck-Wagon Disaster

Family Dog Suspected Cause Of Miniature Chuck-Wagon Disaster https://theonion.com/family-dog-suspected-cause-of-miniature-chuck-wagon-dis-1819564597/

The outside world There was a book nearly 20 years ago, where Bernard-Henri Lévy travelled American in the spirit of Tocqueville.

phoebemaltzbovy.substack.com/p/the-outsid...

The cover of THE DEVIL IN SILVER, a novel by Victor LaValle. A white bull's skull is flanked by red flowers in a spooky arrangement. The title is shown in silver letters. The authors name sits at the top of the book in red letters.

My novel about systematic evil & the need for regular people to team up & fight it is now available in the UK.

Sadly, some themes never go out of style.

THE DEVIL IN SILVER.

With a gorgeous cover and a wonderful introduction from the great @sgj.bsky.social

www.penguin.co.uk/books/476343...

Been wishing for decades that someone would do an updated version.

Post a game you remember playing that nobody else remembers:

It's been down a couple times the past few days -- squirrels gnawing at the algorithm, I guess -- but it's back up now.

coming here while twitter is down

Wow, deep cut!

This isn't even what the article says! It's mostly about how nobody can really tell if AI is useful for science or maths, and as ever with every single one of these stories, there's one anecdote of a person saying "yeah it's good but you know, you need to check if it's right"

Conveyance If I told you that I got into an argument with a stranger on the internet (you may be tempted to stop me before I finish the thought) over whether it’s tantamount to child abuse to use a stroller, you...

phoebemaltzbovy.substack.com/p/conveyance

I mean, there've been zero bear maulings in NYC over the past decade, so maybe it worked.

Happy Birthday to the world’s greatest living actor, Nicolas Cage!

LLM Hallucinations Are Still Absolutely Nuts A couple months back, a grad student reached out to me to see if I could help with some research they were doing.

Interesting Freddy deBoer piece on LLM hallucinations:
open.substack.com/pub/freddied...

The problem with, say, trying to sell copies of one's book online, isn't limited to the algorithm or the competition. One thing I've noticed is that nobody has any money.

Car Rolls Up To Stoplight Blasting Google Maps Directions

Car Rolls Up To Stoplight Blasting Google Maps Directions https://theonion.com/car-rolls-up-to-stoplight-blasting-google-maps-directio-1819579513/

YouTube video by Simon Roper From Old English to Modern American English in One Monologue

From Old English to Modern American English in One Monologue:
youtu.be/842OX2_vCic?...

Curating my Bluesky feed to get the perfect ratio of people saying everyone needs to get off X to people reposting screenshots from X

Peter Weller starred in a PSA about this four decades ago:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=-y46...

The Shadow Year is on Fantasy Book Review's list of the 100 Best Fantasy Books of all Time.
www.fantasybookreview.co.uk/top-100-fant...

I initially interpreted point 2 the same way, but wouldn't the revised SFWA ruling imply that even Google searches are disqualifying?

Does "used LLMs at any point during the writing process" necessarily refer to having the LLM write prose for you? Because these days, technically, I'm using an LLM every time I Google something.

capybara with a slice of mud island with river sedges like a cape over fur

me, preparing for winter

I wrote, not paywalled, about the Compact white men essay that everyone with opinions about shared these opinions about ages ago. phoebemaltzbovy.substack.com/p/loss-of-pr...

can't stop watching this clip of a tesla Optimus teleoperator taking his headset off before properly logging out the robot

It's my capybaraversary. Met these guys a year ago today in the Nordelta suburb of Buenos Aires: