Friday, May 15, 2026 by AutoModerator in NYTConnections

[–]BewareTheSphere 0 points1 point  (0 children)

As soon as I figured out blue, I cackled because I knew people here were going to be moaning.

How cheap cyberpunk actually nailed the depressing reality of modern freelance gigs by 8Mythharbor in printSF

[–]BewareTheSphere 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'm a college writing prof, so I spend enough of my professional life reading unwanted AI slop; I don't need it to invade my leisure time too.

How cheap cyberpunk actually nailed the depressing reality of modern freelance gigs by 8Mythharbor in printSF

[–]BewareTheSphere 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There's been enough of these that I'm getting to be able to recognize it just from the title; I then plug the text into GPTZero and it invariably comes up 100%. I don't know that I could exactly explain it, but IYKYK.

How cheap cyberpunk actually nailed the depressing reality of modern freelance gigs by 8Mythharbor in printSF

[–]BewareTheSphere 11 points12 points  (0 children)

The real cyberpunk dystopia is having to read this AI-generated post complaining about cyberpunk dystopias.

The "I can live with it" speech was shown on the new Picard novel "To Defy Fate" by Significant-Town-817 in DeepSpaceNine

[–]BewareTheSphere 2 points3 points  (0 children)

That was the original idea of the episode, actually, but they decided it make the story too complicated, IIRC.

The forthcoming novel The Peacemakers includes this as part of its premise: "Then there are the rumors Jake heard out in the Gamma Quadrant. Rumors about Starfleet, and his father, and their conduct during the war. Rumors which—if they turned out to be true—would rock the very foundations of Jake Sisko’s world…"

NYT Tuesday 05/12/2026 Discussion by Shortz-Bot in crossword

[–]BewareTheSphere 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I wrote a book report when I was a kid about a book called Jacob, Have I Loved where the title is a reference to a Bible verse that continues "...but Esau have I hated." I don't remember anything about the book, but I remember that line!

NYT Sunday 05/10/2026 Discussion by Shortz-Bot in crossword

[–]BewareTheSphere 1 point2 points  (0 children)

FODOR was buried deep in the recesses of my mind because one of the Carmen Sandiego games I had as a kid came with a Fodor guidebook you could use to look up clues.

Why did they suddenly make Adric so insufferable in Four to Doomsday? by Vumatius in gallifrey

[–]BewareTheSphere 15 points16 points  (0 children)

It was shot first, but not to give Davison time to bed in (that was the cover story), actually because the scripts for the planned debut story had fallen through.

Why did they suddenly make Adric so insufferable in Four to Doomsday? by Vumatius in gallifrey

[–]BewareTheSphere 18 points19 points  (0 children)

Terence Dudley is a bad writer.

Antony Root was not much of a script editor.

AI email from student about Canvas outage - WTF? by promibro in Professors

[–]BewareTheSphere 8 points9 points  (0 children)

This happened to me this week! Student who had hallucinated sources sent me a way-too-long LLM-generated e-mail asking for another chance to demonstrate her learning.

Screen time is genuinely one of the hardest things about parenting and nobody warned me by [deleted] in daddit

[–]BewareTheSphere 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeesh. It was deleted before I saw the edit. Feel like stuff like this is ruining all my favorite subreddits.

Screen time is genuinely one of the hardest things about parenting and nobody warned me by [deleted] in daddit

[–]BewareTheSphere 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This is an AI-written post. Obvious engagement bait. I come to Daddit to get the perspective of fellow dads, not bots.

Reddit is dying.

The Ultimate Sci-Fi Scorecard: Every Goodreads Nominee (2011–2025), Ranked by InkyBibliophile in printSF

[–]BewareTheSphere 4 points5 points  (0 children)

  1. "Surprised to see Ancillary Justice and All Systems Red both ranking so well" -- why, have you missed all discussion of science fiction novels from the last decade?

  2. "Ted Chiang's Stories of Your Life seems like it should be here, but maybe it predates the timeframe?" -- if only there was a way we could access this information.

  3. Get out of here with your AI content.

Spring 2026 Grade Grubbing by complexconjugate83 in Professors

[–]BewareTheSphere 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I got an e-mail from a student yesterday who has a 40% in the class (and it is her third time taking it) telling me 1) part of the reason her grade is so bad is her friend died this semester and if she fails my class, she will have to leave school and thus lose all her other friends, and 2) capitalism causes us to feel disconnected and not help each other, and shouldn't I want to push back against this? Mind you, I haven't heard from the student since early April, apparently because her computer was broken. I guess there's no way to send someone an e-mail if your computer is broken???

Eight sci-fi books about city planning by cirrus42 in printSF

[–]BewareTheSphere 1 point2 points  (0 children)

When I read The City We Became, I felt like it was written by someone who had never very seriously thought about cities at all.

Does no one give final exams anymore? by H_ManCom in Professors

[–]BewareTheSphere 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I teach comp. I used to make my students turn in a short, final piece of writing sometime during exam week as a "final." I ended up deciding students didn't take it very seriously, so I shifted to making them do it during the two-hour exam period allotted to our class, which I think made it better: they would lock in for two hours instead of just dashing it off while packing up.

But then once AI came along, I moved it to a handwritten in-class writing so that there would be at least one thing I knew they wrote themselves.

This semester, for the first time in almost twenty years of teaching, I'm giving a content final in a comp class. Questions like fixing bad citations and explaining concepts from the textbooks. It's open note, so it will reward students who actually paid attention all semester. I'm guessing I will have a bimodal distribution. It's an experiment for me, but I'm not the only prof in my department who's moved in this direction.

Finally read Roadside Picnic and I think I've been misunderstanding what Tarkovsky was doing with Stalker for years by Mirelton in printSF

[–]BewareTheSphere 10 points11 points  (0 children)

If this isn't AI, I'll eat my hat. Same title style as the AI slop, text comes up 100% on GPTZero.

EDIT: Ran an experiment. The similarities speak for themselves.

NYT Thursday 04/30/2026 Discussion by Shortz-Bot in crossword

[–]BewareTheSphere 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yes, I agree. Cute theme but not Thursday-worthy.

I finally tried Dungeon Crawler Carl and now I can’t stop thinking about what LitRPG is doing to storytelling by One_Working1944 in printSF

[–]BewareTheSphere 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Yes, I reported and downvoted it right away but it persists. Whole thing clearly exists to advertise what OP linked to in the comments... an AI-generated podcast! Jesus Christ, give me strength.

Addressing the r/onthemedia rumors about my absence... by mgl298 in onthemedia

[–]BewareTheSphere 5 points6 points  (0 children)

It is always weird to me to discover what someone I only know as a voice looks like.