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The Em Dash responds to AI slander

In McSweeney’s, the Em Dash responds to AI slander.

Writers have been using me long before the advent of AI. I am the punctuation equivalent of a cardigan—beloved by MFA grads, used by editors when it’s actually cold, and worn year-round by screenwriters. I am not new here. I am not novel. I’m the cigarette you keep saying you’ll quit.

You think I showed up with ChatGPT? Mary Shelley used me… gratuitously. Dickinson? Obsessed. David Foster Wallace built a temple of footnotes in my name. I am not some sleek, futuristic glyph. I am the battered, coffee-stained backbone of writerly panic—the gasping pause where a thought should have ended but simply could not.

PJH Studios artwork, Portrait of a sun

PJH Studios

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  • The Em Dash responds to AI slander

    In McSweeney’s, the Em Dash responds to AI slander. Writers have been using me long before the advent of AI. I am the punctuation equivalent of a cardigan—beloved by MFA grads, used by editors when it’s actually cold, and worn year-round by screenwriters. I am not new here. I am not novel. I’m the cigarette…

  • Child deaths to increase this year

    Due to USAID cuts, childhood deaths will increase this year. Global deaths among children under five are forecast to rise this year for the first time this millennium, largely as a result of falling foreign aid. The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation predicted that 4.8 million children would die this year, up from 4.6…

  • To praise Gen X

    Amanda Fortini dives deep into the cultural relevance of Generation X. It’s lasting impacts to music, movies, books permeate the pop culture landscape. Yet Gen X isn’t just a time period; it’s also, as Rushkoff writes in “The GenX Reader,” “a culture, a demographic, an outlook, a style, an economy, a scene, a political ideology,…

  • Declining US birthrates

    There’s a hypothesis that there are environmental and biological reasons, for the decline in US birthrates. In a press release, the lead author of a recent meta-analysis suggested that among men in the U.S. with no known fertility challenges, “sperm counts are largely stable and haven’t changed significantly” in recent years. Moreover, it’s unclear whether…

  • Drunk raccoon

    A raccoon broke into a liquor store and passed out in the bathroom.

  • Self driving cars as a public health solution

    The science fiction idea of all traffic consisting of autonomous vehicles lowering traffic accidents, is nearing a reality. Waymo released intro of data documenting nearly 100,000,000 miles of cars driven, and the numbers show significant safety outcomes. The self-driving car company Waymo recently released data covering nearly 100 million driverless miles in four American cities…

  • AI animation acceleration

    Disney is giving animators an AI tool to accelerate character animation. To maintain the “creator-first approach” that centers human artists — a hallmark of last century’s Walt and Roy Disney partnership — Min says that Disney looked into “pretty much all of the AI companies.” “We looked at thousands of companies, all big and small,…

  • Detroit gets a Robocop statue

    A tweet in 2011 inspired a campaign for a statue of Robocop to be built in Detroit.

  • TV creative trees

    In sports, coaching trees are when assistants of preeminent coaches become good coaches, or well-known as well. What if we applied similar thinking to TV show runners and writers? The Ringer drafts a lists of shows whose writers or producers went onto create other successful shows.

  • When your car becomes a brick

    One of the frustrating things about modern life is when a device that requires software to work properly suddenly does not mean working properly, you essentially have a very expensive brick. Vehicles, that require gears, pistons, and all sorts of other mechanical bits and bobs–are also becoming very expensive bricks due to all of the…