#it just sucks all around

[gazpacho-deluxe]

can we talk about how normal lewis is being over everything? i would have started killing

[ravenkings]

so the tricky thing with this is that most of the ai detectors out there (at least the free ones that i use) have a fairly low accuracy rate. you can get a ton of false positives and different ones will often disagree with each other, so i find them to be deeply untrustworthy. i feel like they can be helpful if like......the student REALLY isn't subtle about it and they've literally just copy-pasted the whole thing into a word processor and submitted it as their own work (which I HAVE seen......)

the other unfortunate part of this is that the institutions i work at (and i suspect the us education system in general) have not really been able to come up with a systematic way to deal with this issue so (surprise, surprise) it falls upon the underpaid faculty like yours truly to figure out what to do.

also, this semester was really the first time i had to deal with students submitting ai papers (at least as far as i know) so i'm honestly still trying to figure out how to deal with it going forward (since it will obviously continue to be an issue thanks for fucking NOTHING sam altman and all you silicon valley ai dipshits............)

ANYWAY, how do i tell if a paper was written by AI? first of all, it will NOT sound like the student's writing style at all. chatgpt and other language models have a very distinctive writing style/voice which i would characterize as like corporate, customer service voice but in text form. it's bland, it's general, and it can't talk about anything with any level of specificity. when you're teaching a student how to write, you grow familiar with their distinctive voice as a writer pretty quickly, and so, if you're paying attention, you can usually tell when there's something off.

another thing is, if it's a paper with cited research sources, the sources might either NOT EXIST when you go to look for them or they will mostly be open access (which is fine but like.....if you're a student at a university, you will definitely have access to databases that the university library pays for so like.........come on.)

another thing i've been told anecdotally and which seems to align with my experience is that most ai papers will NOT directly quote sources since a lot of these ai companies are deathly afraid of being accused of plagiarism lmao. i've also heard of ai papers where they would get the ENTIRE plot of a published story wrong and INVENT CHARACTERS who weren't in the original story!

tbh though the best way i've found to try and detect ai papers is by literally opening up chatgpt and putting the essay topic through it to see what it comes up with. it won't come up with EXACTLY THE SAME paper, BUT it will, often, come up with something VERY SIMILAR using extremely similar language and it may even be structured the same way and use the same sources.

again, part of what makes this so fucking annoying is that, as of now, there's no way to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that an essay is ai-generated if the student doesn't own up to it, but, honestly, you just KNOW.

[whitebalverines]

.

[bixels]

In the past, people in the Animal Crossing community would make fun of Tom Nook as a sleazy landlord. Since then, he's really rehabilitated his image as this 'heart of gold' businessman (he's the one who puts bells and furniture in trees for you to find! he adopted orphans! he donates to charity!), but New Horizons genuinely paints the most devious version of him.

He's successfully privatized settler colonialism: you pay HIM to move to a "deserted island" (which apparently the oceans in the AC world are just full of) and start a colony that he is directly invested in. At best he's running a weird vacation package scam (you arrive on the island with no money and in debt for "using his services"). At worst, he's using you to set up company towns. For god's sake, he literally has his own fake currency that he forces you to use to pay off your debt. But don't worry, he's repackaged it in a way that definitely doesn't sound like an MLM scam: the Nook Mileage Program!

You're no longer just his tenant or his temporary part-timer, you're his business lackey. The entire tutorial section of the game has you spending actual weeks running around completing tasks and doing hard labor to set up his colony. You're even tasked with preparing his properties and finding buyers for them. No, you aren't a tenant anymore. You work for the landlord. You are directly responsible for finding tenants for him. And he doesn't even fucking pay you. Not for setting up town hall and museum, or his nephew's shop –– which is the ONLY store on the entire island that sells necessities –– or bringing KK Slider to town, or helping populate his town. Not a single cent. No, actually, you have to pay HIM to BUY infrastructure like bridges and stairs and park benches. And all the while, he's telling you're the "resident representative"; you get to call the shots! That the reward is the community's progress. That what you're doing is in everyone's best interest (but most importantly, his).

Since NH's release, people have done a lot of legwork to say that Tom Nook isn't a capitalist while the game shows him at his very worst. He owns the only general store in town. You're forced to use a phone that he modified and branded as his own. Buy Nook-branded furniture and merchandise at the self-serve kiosk in the town hall, a governmental building! There's no conflict of interest here!

But hey, if you're tired of being the landlord/business mogul's goon, you can also find work as a deluxe resort home designer for a company that also pays you in their special company currency that can only be used to buy their products instead of a real salary! Because that's what the Animal Crossing franchise needs! More vacation homes!!!

[taffywabbit]

I finally watched breaking bad (all within the past week or so while I worked, finished it and watched el camino last night) and I'm confident this isn't a new thought I'm expressing or anything but genuinely how DID an entire generation of dudes convince themselves Walter White was cool and admirable and intended to be sympathetic. I know ppl just lack media literacy sometimes but I'm still so confused

I don't think I've EVER watched a piece of media that so blatantly depicts a guy making the worst possible decisions at every turn and having his life ruined for it and not being redeemed or made sympathetic in any significant or lasting way. the kinds of justifications villains USUALLY give that make people consider them "morally grey" or "tragic" or whatever (everything I did was for my loved ones, I did what I had to to survive, once I was in this I couldn't get out, I just needed you to trust me so I could keep you safe, etc etc) is ALWAYS framed as complete self-serving bullshit when Walt says it, and one of the only shreds of personal growth he ever exhibits in the whole series is when he finally fucking admits that. every time he does something even remotely cool or drops a quotable one-liner, something terrible immediately happens that makes everything worse and makes him look like an unreasonable idiot asshole again. by the end of the series the ONLY characters they can still contrast as being morally "worse" than him are literally a bunch of bloodthirsty neonazis who kept a guy in a cage for several months. this show is practically SCREAMING at you the entire time not to admire Walt. why did every dude I knew in highschool have his face on tshirts and Facebook pfps.

I just don't get it. at least with The Dark Knight's Joker it was like, a feature-length movie and that's it. you spend a lot less time with the Joker and it has a lot less time to delve into his motivations, so there's way more room for flanderization and misinterpretation as people extrapolate the few cool/interesting/sad things they saw into a whole nuanced misunderstood guy in their heads and online. Walter White has 5 seasons' worth of 45min episodes to convince you beyond a shadow of a doubt that he is a miserable fucking loser who ruins everything he touches because of greed and selfishness. if you weren't watching it for that, what WERE you getting out of this. what DID you think this show was about. am I just missing some key piece of context from 2012 or whatever that would help me understand this

[obsob]

oooooooooough i love you i love you i love you!!!! hand in loving hand !!!!!!

[benevolenterrancy]

Scholarly peak is catching up on recent literature

[chatlote]

I just want a boring January.

[somegrumpynerd]

Even though they don't have lungs, do you think skeleton monsters can still use helium to do funny voices? It would be an absolute tragedy for classic Sans if he couldn't but also I think all the au guys should get to do it too, for goofs

[charmac]

Sunny doesn’t have a New Years episode I can spam about today, so instead I’m sharing the cold open I wrote for my idea as to how the Gang do New Year's Resolutions:

In essence, my idea is that the Gang do Resolutions by writing down something that's either achievable by them (or something they would like to do) that's difficult to achieve (or would be seen as unpleasant to do) by every other member of the Gang. They draw the "resolutions" at random, so there's a chance they get their own and have fun with it, but obviously there is a greater chance that they get tasked with someone else's. They draw at midday and only have until midnight to complete their resolution, or they face public humiliation by every other member of the Gang.

[madlori]

[rosecoloredmax]

they looked like they were about to kiss in that one picture idk

[scarlettaagni]

what was psychically beamed into my mind reading Megatronia chapter

Unite Warriors was somehow the gayest and most painfully straight comic I've read. it was not cool enough to be bisexual

I choose to read this an expression of disgust and not a grunt

[simcardiac-arrested]

like tree, like apple

[bmpmp3]

based off this video. i think teto is a union man

[magnecalliope]

Basically every person that joined the Kingdom of Fools did so because it put them in proximity to power rather than any shared ideological reasons. Foolish wanted to be King, Owen and Clown both wanted to manipulate Foolish to their own ends, Sneeg literally just joined the first faction to offer him a material good he demanded. With the exception of Ros, everyone in the Kingdom viewed their faction in an utterly pragmatic manner. A means to an end. None of them are there because they believe in a specific cause, and this worked as a strength for them, it's what made them appear as such a united front compared to other factions. It's literally the principle that unions are built on, power in numbers. You might not like the guy that's harassing that Red faction member, but he's part of your union so you defend him. If you don't defend him, then who is to say there will be anyone there to defend you when you're in trouble?

Compare that to the Teal Titans who are constantly squabbling with each other because they disagree about what neutrality looks like, or because they aren't happy when someone takes the reigns and decides they have to take a hard stance. The Hostiles who have to kill to survive, but most of them aren't willing to be the one to get their hands dirty to do it. Even the Honey Badgers who had a rocky start with Bad refusing to trust Pangi and Hannah with gathering their quest items several weeks in a row.

But the thing is that now Ros, the heart of the Kingdom, has been driven away. And the rest of the faction, they have their union, but their loyalties don't lie in that union. It lies with people. It lies with Ros. Maybe you put up with the guy picking fights outside your faction because you know your strength lies in your numbers, but what do you do when the only person you actually care about protecting leaves? What reason do two of the most powerful people on the server have to stay with the Kingdom when they've outgrown what the Kingdom can offer them?

And what the hell will everyone else do if they decide to leave too?