I’ve posted a couple of times about instances I’m aware of where people are using AI in pro se court cases, especially family courts. A new study shows evidence of increasing numbers in pro se cases at the federal level, exacerbating existing bottlenecks. Many trade-offs abound here.
A professor asked students to self-report AI usage on their homework, leading to lots of confusion and uproar. Points aside, it’s clear people want more clarity up front about when and whether to use LLM tools. In the meantime, treating students like they’re guilty until proven innocent is a bad MO.
I missed this 2025 article by Noah Hawley on Vonnegut, war and the atomic bomb, and it is worth the time.
What does it mean for the culture when everything (everything!) is content, even war and mass shootings?
Timothy Chester offers some thoughts on the place of AI-assisted software development in a modern research university, and suggests that just because you can doesn’t necessarily mean you should.
Mindy Seu on It’s Been a Minute talking about the history of women on the internet.
Out: Twitter on a vape. In: AI-powered crypto vape. Is this real? Who can tell anymore.
Was gifted a jar of gorgeous fresh maple syrup.
Morels for dinner.
Maris Kreizman on AI pressures building in the publishing industry, particularly how it impacts writers and editors: “It’s not an ideal environment for productivity, let alone for making art.”
A nostalgic read on how music nerdery bloomed online.
More on user-generated content marketing and how it works. UGC is a powerful example of “social proof,” where people’s parasocial tendencies are leveraged to boost brand credibility and conversions. This is the consumer psychology behind celebrity and influencer sales and endorsements.
Watching the fallout: Fans discovered that the band Geese benefitted from a hefty marketing campaign. Folks are debating whether this makes Geese a “psy-op” or merely “sell-outs”, to use an old term of art. Meanwhile the marketing firm behind the push is getting a ton of attention in its own right.
I’m following a guy in TX who is using AI to write and illustrate children’s books whole cloth, then self-publishes using Amazon, and getting recognition in his region as a laudable children’s author. The books are categorically not good. It’s like people are rewarding his content strategy.
Tom’s Hardware on Mythos and marketing hype. Additional commentary from Michael Corn, asking whether Mythos coverage reinforces or establishes perceptions about cybersecurity.
Garbage Day on what makes something cool to Gen Z, and how this is impacted by the degradation of “pillars of coolness” in previous generations like culture rags and MTV. GD predicts that “cool” will be measured by lack of polish and “how many human beings left their house to experience it.”
Finished reading: Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor 📚
What the internet was made for: A Chicago music fan secretly recorded over 10,000 live concerts from Nirvana to Sonic Youth to Spoon, and has made them all available online.
Taste the Music is a new audio series exploring why artists are driven to create. The first episode features storytelling and songwriting by friend of the blog Whitney Mann, where she chronicles her experience getting “the yips” onstage, and how she worked through it and picked up her guitar again.