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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   20344 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 3, 2026

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Pre-AI slop was actually good - and AI ruined it

I've seen many claims that "Slop existed before AI" and that means AI isn't destroying the internet. I believe that is absolutely false. The OG slop was actually good, and now it's gone.

Let's define exactly what we're talking about. The slop is web content created by marketing teams, at the absolute lowest cost possible, in order to improve search engine ranking. Let's look at a specific example: when looking up a term mentioned in another post I came across slop created by the same company and same marketing team, but years apart. Let's see if you can tell which slop is worthless garbage ruined by AI, and which is slop that despite being slop may actually be slightly useful.

Critical Insights into Hostile Witness Designation: What It Means When a Lawyer Asks for Permission to Treat the Witness as Hostile

In today's hypercompetitive legal landscape, every advantage matters—especially when it comes to managing witness testimony. A seemingly simple request by a lawyer to treat a witness as hostile can fundamentally change the dynamics of a trial and even determine its outcome. Research indicates that strategic use of this tactic can help uncover inconsistencies, expose bias, and ultimately strengthen a case. This comprehensive guide is designed for legal professionals, law students, and litigators who want to delve into the complexities of hostile witness designations and understand the full strategic, procedural, and ethical dimensions of this courtroom tool. We have optimized this article using high-ranking keywords such as “hostile witness designation,” “treat witness as hostile,” and “litigation strategies” to ensure it not only provides unmatched value but also performs strongly in search engine rankings.

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link

What Does It Mean When A Lawyer Says “Permission To Treat The Witness As Hostile?”

We asked attorneys throughout the United States what it means when a lawyer says “Permission to treat the witness as hostile?” Several attorneys responded and our readers might find what they said interesting. We hope you enjoy their answers.

It means that the witness you call to testify is not on your side, i.e., is ‘hostile’ to your client’s position. Nevertheless, you want to call that witness to testify in your case (in which you’re trying to prove your case, not disprove the other side’s) for other reasons, i.e., to fill in some facts that need to be stated for you to satisfy your burden of putting into evidence all of the facts necessary to demonstrate your entitlement to bring the claims your client has asserted. If the Judge accepts your assertion that the witness is hostile to your case, you are permitted to ‘lead’ the witness with questions like, ‘isn’t it true that the light was red when you first observed the blue car?’ If the witness is not ‘hostile’ the lawyer is not permitted to ‘lead’ the witness, i.e., to suggest the answer to the question. All you’re allowed to do is to ask open-ended questions like ‘where were you on the 20th of March? Who, if anyone else, was also there?’

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link

Both of these articles were created with the exact same intention: to enhance search engine ranking at the lowest cost possible. Yet one of them makes the internet a better place, and the other one ruins it. I might even contend that when a human is tasked with writing worthless fluff, that human can't help but to try to insert some nuggets of truth into that fluff. It's simply human nature. AI has no such compulsion.

In 2010 I had a job writing brief scene descriptions for a porn company. Three sentences maximum. I was a political science major so couldn't help but slip in totally irrelevant references to Sandinistas or whatever after getting the basics - blonde, threesome, etc. - out of the way. My boss didn't seem to care. I guess it made no difference to the, er, bottom line.

Now AI can do that and it will surely be without my idiosyncratic approach.

Why Sandinistas though?

Oh I have no idea how I worked that in this far out, but I did

I see. So - I'm guessing you had to watch the movies before writing the scene descriptions?

Curious. How do you actually get AIs that will process porn? It seems like you need to grab open weight models and fine tune them? And the fine tunings themselves are valuable enough that you don't just post them? Definitely doesn't seem as easy as grabbing a Claude API key and writing a Python script.

I'm sure ai's own idiosyncratic apprach can figure out how to slip in a few emdashes, and some not x, but y into each output

The guy that hired me would not just get AI to do it, and he wouldn't include these tangential irrelevances. Point is my human randomness was able to get in. But no longer.

Some human scuff can be a good thing. Not sure if I have enough information to make the call in this case.

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