A weird parliamentary repeal bill complaining that the Plain Language Act costs too much to implement. I am concerned that Judith Collins, Key's old whipping dummy, wants both to excuse poor writers (contrary to the back-to-basics literacy drive in schools) and also to legalise obfuscation as an exclusionary measure.
https://bills.parliament.nz/v/6/056F85E8-A3B3-4124-7DA9-08DD6A63478A?Tab=history?Tab=history
Emergent Consequences is now available on itch.io, for free!
This story follows the antics of Life, who paints the universe into being, and here twin brother, Death, who exists simply to destroy everything she creates.
Together, they create a universe that thankfully isn't our own and Life continually interferes, leading to emergent consequences.
https://owentyme.itch.io/emergent-consequences
#author #indieauthor #books #writing #fantasy #humor #darkhumor #satire #fiction #itch
Before they forbid it, love
put on your nicest dress,
we're going
to dance on the volcano
#dailyhaikuprompt
#mountain
#haiku 7/9/7
#senryu
#poetry
#SmallPoems
#writing
#music
Dating with #tourettes is weird.
There are two things I have to deal with now that it is known about, but still misunderstood:
1. It's fetishized, and someone only likes me because they think it's quirky and weird. They view me more like a play thing, and don't see the real personality underneath. So I feel more like a toy.
2. They don't actually understand it, and only think they do, then doubt I actually have it, or use it against me in abusive manipulation.
It's such a relief to get some writing done and out.
If you happen to follow my #fiction #writing then I've also put Chapter 18 out there for Early Access.
E/A is for Patreon/Ko-Fi subs and anyone in #WorldAnvil supporter groups (even pesky Unauthorised Mages).
→ https://www.worldanvil.com/w/qal-ath-fj-brodie/a/xviii-poison-ginger2C-springing-bear-prose
It was worth delaying food for, as well. But I'm spacing now so it's food time. The cats will be wondering where their next meal's coming from, especially as it's "too rainy" to hunt.
Academic writing has always been in flux
It can feel when reading academics discussing LLMs that previously settled practices have been suddenly upturned by the introduction of this strange technology into higher education. The reality is that our practices of writing and communication have been through many such changes, often within the span of an individual’s own career. I was reaching the midpoint of a PhD when social media came to be a prominent feature of academic life, offering a potent forum through which to connect with others and discuss ideas alongside an ever present possibility of distraction. During the same PhD I remember talking to my supervisor about producing an 800 page book on a type writer. I simply couldn’t understand how such a thing was possible. Much as I struggled more recently when reading Lamott’s (1994) description of repairing a three hundred page manuscript by placing it on the floor of a cavernous living room in order to reorganise it page-by-page:
“I put a two-page scene here, a ten-page passage there. I put these pages down in a path, from beginning to end, like a horizontal line of dominoes, or like a garden path made of tiles. There were sections up front that clearly belonged in the middle, there were scenes in the last fifty pages that were wonderful near the beginning, there were scenes and moments scattered throughout that could be collected and written to make a great introduction to the two main characters. I walked up and down the path, moving batches of paper around paper-clipping self-contained sections and scribbling notes to myself on how to shape or tight or expand each section in whatever necessary way.” (Lamott’s 1994: 100).
It’s not that I couldn’t do this with my own text. While I’ve still not had reason to find out how to print at my university, in my fourth year since starting to work there, I’m sure I could quickly print out this text if I was motivated to do so. I remember the feeling of holding my PhD thesis in my hands the first time I printed out the draft, suddenly feeling a sense of mastery over this diffuse thing which had been the horizon of my experience for so long. I can recognise the appeal in the physical, the ways of relating to ideas opened up when we get our hands on their material expressions.
It’s just that I struggle to imagine relating in such a physical way, even allowing for the fact that I would undoubtedly be printing an electronic manuscript as opposed to Lamott’s manuscript produced through a typewriter. I was never a routine user of a printer to begin with but the separation from my office printer during the pandemic, combined with a diffuse dislike of the clutter of paper, inexorably led me towards working without print outs. It’s now been at least five years since I last printed something out and it wasn’t something I did much to begin with. The physical manifestations of my writing have slipped out of my immediate experience, no longer presenting as ready-to-hand, in a way that leaves them lodged as an intellectual possibility. In the same way that academics of my generation will often find it perplexing to be reminded that paper journals were once collected and consulted in physical form.
When our routines are disrupted we often feel compelled to account for that disruption. If things don’t work as planned, we are led to reflect on what we expected to happen. It’s easier to see routines when they don’t work because when they do they simply fade into the background. The same is true for the role of technology within these routines (Marres 2014: loc 1919). The introduction of LLMs into academic writing provides such a disruptive occasion because it unsettles many of the assumptions upon which our routines have previously depended. It’s no longer the case that a coherent piece of text we encounter must have been produced by a human author. It’s no longer the case that completing our own text requires only human effort.
This technological shift forces us to confront what writing means to us beyond its mechanical production. Just as word processors transformed academic writing by making revision less laborious, LLMs challenge us to articulate what remains essentially human in our scholarly production. Perhaps what matters most isn’t whether we occasionally use AI assistance, but how thoughtfully we integrate these tools into practices that preserve intellectual ownership and creative engagement with our ideas.
#academicWriting #digitalScholarship #generativeAI #technology #writing
Dominik Alexander
Alistair K
Inverse Shadow
Shan L Scott Author
Mistress witch writes
Owen Tyme
Ab
RationizedInsanity🏳️🌈🇺🇦🇨🇦🇬🇱🇵🇸
FibroJedi
Mark Carrigan