I am part of a book club and a friend of mine joked, "I'll join but I need the CliffNotes."

I go, "Does CliffNotes even still exists?" I really didn't know.

It does exist and they have free summaries.

I went to college rather late in life and was 36 when I started. Kids were stressing over the AI detecting programs. I suggested just writing their own papers. They looked at me like I'd said I came from Mars.

Unfortunately there are a lot of people my age who have or would do that, but they're missing out on getting drunk while writing and then waking up the next day to see if what you wrote is okay to turn in. (Yes, I genuinely did this when I was in college and would do it again. At least I didn't cheat like my peers did.)

Credit? You just gonna steal that quote without crediting the source? That's just what AI does.

Ah the creative freedom of literature analysis

It’s tough not to form a superiority complex these days when you hear of people who can’t compose emails by themselves.

You'd think that last sentence would make people understand HOW you got that knowledge...

I think everyone should think of AI as that you have random access to the knowledge of reddit. Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's a troll, and sometimes no one will answer. You also have to have knowledge to understand what it's saying most of the time.

They gotta shill for AI because the goal is total mass surveillance on the general public with total privacy for the rich kiddie fuckers.

Oh and also ginning up fake "evidence" to pin on dissidents.

even now radio is powerful media that can change and influence minds,

we are in this mess because of consistent messaging on conservative talk radio for blue collar logistics workers who are "self employed"

most fun part of writing is the part where you don't write

What makes me sad is how it’s an IQ test. If using AI makes you feel like you’re becoming a better coder, what do you think is cheaper for Anthropic or OpenAI, to make you feel something or to actually do something? Same business model as Fox News: don’t actually inform people, just make them feel informed. Much cheaper and sells like hotcakes.

Similarly CEOs don’t understand that making a report or writing an analysis that looks reasonable at first glance but is inaccurate is super simple for a human to do too. Fixing all the errors and made up stuff takes longer than just doing the work carefully. My boss was proud they used AI to do a works cited for something and left google.com/ in the linked references. If I was a reviewer for a funding organization seeing that would not be a vote of confidence that the applicant was serious.

I wouldn't trust my spreadsheets to AI

I get the sentiment, but I don't think this really applies to Ari Shapiro.

Freakonomics was a big breaking point for me too. I used to think it was really cool, and even read the first book! But there was an argument in it that stuck with me, and was sort of the marquee analysis for the show for a long time.

It went something like, in the 90s there was all this fuss about super-predators, urban youths who would grow up without stable families and surrounded by gang violence, and they would basically never develop a conscience, and you'd have a generation of killers that made the cities unliveable. Apparently this was something Killary stumped about but I remember it being all over the news at one point. So why did this never occur? Because this generation would be the first who grew up with favorable laws and views toward abortion, so women were able to terminate unwanted pregnancies.

And at first I was pretty amazed at this, I was like, wow aren't liberal reforms great? But after reading and learning and thinking more about the world I realized what I wish was obvious: there never was a threat of "super predators," these people are just incredibly racist, and the freakonomocs team were fucking hacks.

Then one day I was picking my kids up and listening to Elliot Abrams on freah air or some shit speaking in dulcet tunes about the necessity to invade Venezuela. Another segment on Wait wait don't tell me was about a precision missle that could precisely target a particular person, and they made a joke about how the missle could fly so close to the target that samurai swords would pop out and slice up the terrorist. Queue hysterical laughter.

And that was it, I realized these people are the most bloodthirsty fucking freaks imaginable. People who sounded smart to sell massacres and racism to dumb idiots, like myself at one point, to middle brow pseudo intellectuals who didn't really pay attention, just wanted to feel good about being informed while learning nothing.

Once you see how NPR is just dripping in gore, you can't unsee it

I can't quite put my finger on moments like yours, but had the same strange sensation of creeping revulsion toward NPR, where it once felt like a safe, familiar, even comforting, thing.

NPR, in a million ways small and large, carries water for the status quo, and it's fuckin gross. Even just small ongoing things like their current phrasing "the war in Iran". It's an anodyne, neutral phrasing used in their broadcasts, seemingly as a rule. Same neutral language for cops when "an assailant was shot and died", or when "a weapon discharged", etc.

It's never the war against Iran, it's not "the unprovoked attack against Iran", etc., it's just this vague inscrutable thing merely happening, and merely in Iran. No one is responsible, and it just is there. And thankfully, it's only IN Iran! Wouldn't it be worse if that were spilling over into other places and things?

There are countless stronger examples, but this one is current and consistent and you can hear it in any random news broadcast, and it tells a huge lie in a tiny word every time.

NPRs corporate capture is a national disgrace. The reporters are fucking hand puppets now a days.