site banner
Hour Week Month Year All
Hot Bump Top Bottom New Old Controversial
Advanced search parameters (with examples): "author:quadnarca", "domain:reddit.com", "over18:true"

Showing 25 of 244 results for

domain:freddiedeboer.substack.com

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 7, 2025

I want to revisit the comparison of AI slop with human slop, and whether AI is currently capable of writing.

I recently came across the most mind numbing and soulless writing in this series of articles: https://www.greenmatters.com/a/andrew-krosofsky . It has all the hallmarks of slop, hundreds of low effort articles, no clear theme, bored and soulless writing, etc. But guess what, it's written by a human! He was also really doing the grind, writing multiple articles per day. I also have receipts because the wayback machine shows his writing years before chatgpt existed: https://web.archive.org/web/20201015131543/https://www.greenmatters.com/a/andrew-krosofsky .

But I noticed something immediately. The writing was obviously human. It didn't have any of that uncanny valley feeling. There are no obvious falsehoods spoken like truth. No hallucinations. And even his worst articles are 1000x better than the typical AI fake news. This just reinforces my understanding:

Even the lowest dregs of the journalistic world write at a higher level than the best cutting edge AI models today.

Now I'm sure the AI bulls here will disagree. So I have 2 challenges for you all:

  1. Find a single hallucination in an article written by this author between 2021 and today. There are quite a few, so this should be easy if human writing is unreliable. For the purposes of this, a hallucination is a statement that is both provably false at the time of writing and not supported by a linked source.

  2. Demonstrate a technique for an AI model of your choice to reliably copywrite articles of a similar quality, over any arbitrary topic that has reputable sources available. Those articles must not have obvious AI tells, pass AI detection, and have a hallucination rate of less than 1 in 1000.

To put my money where my mouth is, I'll offer a wager of $50 for the first person to complete either of these challenges. But I think the fact that a human who is at the bottom of the journalistic world can handily do this but an AI can't should demonstrate the big gulf between human and AI that still exists.

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 7, 2025

Trump on his assassination attempt:

"They briefed me and I'm satisfied with it," Trump said. "They should have had someone in the building, that was a mistake, they should have had communications with the local police—they weren't tied in—and they should have been tied in. So there were mistakes made. And that shouldn't have happened."

"But I was satisfied in terms of the bigger plot, the larger plot," he continued, "I have great confidence in these people. They're very talented and very capable—they had a bad day, I think they'll admit that." "This is a very dangerous job being president,"

Trump’s claims of stolen election have led to much recriminations that he is no mere crook or liar, but damaging to democracy. His supporters otoh, have ramped up the anti-elite conspiracy to include this assassination attempt, in order to show loyalty/outbid themselves, even here on the motte. This rejection by the principal actor/TV star sends a clear signal where the truth lies in this matter, whether you agree with Trump’s politics or not. Test is over, results are in, you can calibrate. If you bought the assassination conspiracy, consider that your brain may have been fried by the culture war.

Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 13, 2025

I have discovered, by dint of fucking around, that SwiftKey keyboard for Android allows me to insert em-dashes with relative ease. I'm torn about using them—on one end, they're more expressive than standard hyphens or semi-colons; but on the other, in this climate, that invites accusations of AI writing.

I'm entirely fine with "it's not X, it's Y" becoming deprecated, it's a rather boring turn of phrase, but I'm still annoyed by the fact that I didn't even notice em-dashes as a distinct option before they went out of style.

Am I truly worried? Uh, maybe? My writing style is distinctive enough that it's not trivial to replicate using an LLM. They absolutely won't do it by default.

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 7, 2025

You do not need to blackmail rich Jewish-American billionaires to support Israel

Well-connected Jews have attempted to blackmail Jewish billionaires before. Rabbi Balkany tried to blackmail Steve Cohen into funding yeshivas. Balkany was famous for being a DC “fixer”, so this may have been par for the course for Balkany. There are some billionaire Jews who are unaligned with Zionism. I recall reading the Wikipedia of a Hollywood talent management owner who had no confirmed philanthropy whatsoever, but for the life of me I can’t remember his name, and there’s also Zuckerberg whose donations to Jewish causes are a pittance relative to his philanthropy.

The substantial majority of those alleged to have been victims of Epstein's supposed blackmail scheme were Zionist Jews

Source? If Epstein is meeting with Zionist Jews in private, this is not evidence that he is blackmailing them. Do you think he used a separate private jet to do this or a separate island? Even if they were raping the girls, do you think Mossad would prefer this to happen under the auspices of a Mossad handler, or do you think they’d prefer that they try it elsewhere? You have no evidence that the majority of blackmail victims were Zionists. The only confirmed blackmail case is Bill Gates.

He’s a liar

This is like saying James Bond is a liar. Epstein lying to his clients about why he’s loaded and what connections he has is exactly what he would do if he were Mossad. This cannot be used as evidence that he was unprofessional or untrustworthy, or that he wasn’t Mossad.

You are also ignoring very important evidence:

  1. Despite having connections to Israel, none of Epstein’s victims were Jewish. Even Jerry Seinfeld was dating a 17yo Jewish girl at this time. I imagine this will be excused away on account of Jewish girls not being as drawn to wealthy men, but Instagram attests to this not being the case.

  2. According to Maria Farmer, a victim, there was a theme of Jewish supremacism that pervaded Epstein’s circle, among Epstein / Ghislaine Maxwell / Eileen Guggenheim. “You’re nothing because you’re not Jewish”, “useless white girl”, “anyone who was not Jewish, the way they spoke about them was really horrifying”, “it was every one of them, the way they spoke”. If Epstein’s circle was Jewish supremacist, this would explain his link to Mossad.

  3. You are forgetting that Wexner was linked to Mossad by way of the Mega Group, and Epstein’s connections were throughout the Mega Group.

The spy said he was tasked by the Israeli ambassador to get a copy of a secret letter given to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat by then-Secretary of State Warren Christopher for a source identified only as “MEGA.” “The ambassador wants me to go to MEGA to get a copy of this letter,” the Israeli spy said, to which the superior replied, “This is not something we use MEGA for.”

The counterintelligence report was an embarrassment for the NSA and Israel sought to deflect the identification of MEGA by claiming it referred not to an individual but to the CIA. The leak set off a major hunt for MEGA, believed to be an Israeli mole in the State Department and other agencies.

Then, in 1998, The Wall Street Journal solved the mystery. The newspaper published a story on U.S. titans of industry working for Jewish philanthropy that called themselves the “Mega Group.” It included 20 of America’s wealthiest and most influential Jewish businessmen who met twice a year.

Among the members of the group were Hollywood director Steven Spielberg, Seagram Chairman Edgar Bronfman Sr. and former hedge fund manager Michael Steinhardt. The group was founded in 1991 by two billionaires: Charles Bronfman, Edgar’s brother and Seagram co-chairman, and Mr. Wexner.

Also, 4. the attorney handling Epstein’s 2008 case was told that Epstein belonged to intelligence: In 2017, "a former senior White House official" reported that Alexander Acosta, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida who had handled Epstein's criminal case in 2008, had stated to interviewers of President Donald Trump's first transition team: "I was told Epstein 'belonged to intelligence' and to 'leave it alone'", and that Epstein was "above his pay grade".

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 7, 2025

Tangent: you're writing about AI slop so I was reminded of this Conversations with Tyler: Any Austin, on the "Hermeneutics of Video Games". Any is some kind of famous YouTube celebrity that I'd never heard of. Anyway, Tyler asked him about AI slop w.r.t. video games, and Any made this point that people shouldn't feel too outraged about encountering AI slop on authenticity grounds, because practically everyone's favorite art is inauthentic.

No one will because we can’t even tell now. The amount of times that you have conversations with people and they go, “This was . . .” Mozart’s a great example of this. I can’t get into that conversation because I don’t actually know that much, but my dad — he knows all the classical music and has all those books and reads all the things, but he was largely motivated by money. Yes, that was a big part of his motivation.

People say this when you talk about video games that get made — or music, actually, is probably the best example — “Oh, I know that was an authentic thing. That band, when they put out that album, that was an authentic piece of art,” or whatever.

Then you go and you read about the history, and it turns out that they made it under duress, and they didn’t really want to. They didn’t care about it. All of it is made up, whatever. To me, that makes it very obvious that we can’t even tell the difference between what we perceive as authentic human art versus inauthentic, so it’s very unlikely that we’re going to be very good at being able to tell the difference between AI generated art.

That's a fairly salient point. They weren't conveying some sacred part of the human spirit. They were serving up shit that sells. This isn't the definition of slop, but inauthenticity is the cousin of slop, sure.

It kind of aligns with a different semi-trolly comment I have where people whine that they wanted computers to automate housework, so they could be free to do art. Not automate art so they could spend more time on housework. It shouldn't be surprising that art is easier to automate: popular art is formulaic! Of course it's easy for robots to copy!

  1. I realize calling Mozart slop is odd, but plenty of classical musicians complain about how poppy his music was.
Culture War Roundup for the week of July 7, 2025

I'm curious what you think the counterfactual world looks like, where Trump comes out instead and claims "There were malicious people at work, and it was all orchestrated by [specific actors]."

What would happen next?

And if you're going off the assumption that Trump is being truthful and fully transparent, then why'd you bring up the election issues?

Are YOU saying that his claims of the election being stolen are credible, since you're here saying that he's honest about such serious matters?

His supporters otoh, have ramped up the anti-elite conspiracy to include this assassination attempt, in order to show loyalty/outbid themselves, even here on the motte.

Neat.

Now do the people who don't think Trump was shot at all.

So long as we're addressing conspiracy theories.

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 7, 2025

That's only evidence against her doing it mostly as part of an intelligence operation scheme, not evidence against her owning the account.

If some random Maylasian man is apparently capable of spending all day posting random articles for years and years, why couldn't Maxwell also be the type of person to do that? Rich and famous people are not immune to having normal idiosyncrasies like that.

It could have just been a normal account of hers just like it supposedly is a normal account of random Maylasian guy visiting his own country.

There's a shit ton of weird coincidences and connections, including the major evidence of "they suddenly stopped posting very shortly before public knowledge of Maxwell being arrested even came out" that all fall together to point to it being her account, and is disproven in an incredibly simple way that they refuse to do for no good reason, only resorting to an easy to fake roundabout method that doesn't make any good sense to do unless it's for the purpose of faking, and their official explanation contradicts prior comments by the very account in question.

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 7, 2025

https://coagulopath.com/ghislaine-maxwell-does-not-have-a-secret-reddit-account/

Sometimes a coincidence is just a coincidence.

Even most of the time.

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 7, 2025

This article makes some really terrible arguments

“Maxwell” is not a rare name; howmanyofme.com suggests there are 81,736 Maxwells in the United States. The number worldwide might run into the hundreds of thousands. My father’s middle name is Maxwell.

Not relevant, he's supposed to be Malaysian. How many Malaysian men have the name Maxwell? That they're even trying to use American names and not Malaysian names as an argument is silly, does the author themselves not even believe the "actually they're just a random Maylasian guy!" defense?

It’s hard to see why attending a party would mean you can’t post on Reddit for 24 hours.

Yep the posting correlating with "party times" was actually bad evidence, in part because anyone with a brain knows that scrolling social media on their phone is something plenty do at parties and public events anyway.

So one good actual point that doesn't disprove anything, just dismantles a not particularly strong claim.

But you can’t focus on this similarity and ignore the ways their interests differ. /u/maxwellhill mostly posted about US politics, from the vapid center-left “Orange Man Bad!” perspective that constitutes Reddit’s background radation. (click to enlarge).

The Malaysian man never cared about Malaysia, just US politics. Odd.

Ghislaine Maxwell is on record – literally – as claiming to be Donald Trump’s friend.

Donald Trump didn't even enter politics that much until 2015-2016. He was mostly just a rich celebrity business mogul. And if you know anything about elites, even the literal politicians, they tend to get along surprisingly well anyway. Maybe the writer has no concept of being friends with people of different political beliefs, but it's a common thing.

I’m sorry to tell you this, but /u/maxwellhill did post after the 2nd of July. Just not in public. He continued to perform moderator duties, interact with staff members, and answer private messages. Here’s a conversation between /u/hasharin and /u/maxwellhill that happened on the 9th.

This is exactly the sort of nonsense I'm talking about! If they're perfectly willing to say "Oh my god the account is still active, just look at this private message" then why are they so unwilling to just make a real post?

What kind of person when providing evidence prefers the super easily faked one of a screenshot of an easily edited webpage over hard proof that the account is still active of just making a single post.

You literally have to believe that the moderators are too stupid to realize how ridiculous that is, and trust that none of them would ever lie to cover up their connections to a sex trafficker. It just doesn't make any sense, the entire thing is made even fishier by the hilariously terrible attempt to disprove it.

Here’s a question for believers: do you think Ghislaine cared what the age of consent was?

Yes, pedophiles would prefer to live in a world where they don't have to hide their pedophilia, even if they're rich and powerful and currently getting away with it.

If she is, then large numbers of people (the /r/worldnews mod team, for a start) are lying and/or forging evidence in the most incompetent way possible. It would also require Ghislaine to be both insanely cautious and stupid at the same time, the equivalent of someone locking their front door with three deadbolts and leaving the house keys on the doormat.

"Large numbers of people" but can only name a single group, the Worldnews moderation team who is directly incentivized to lie, is making suspicious and contradictory claims already (like come on again, who "visits" a place they supposedly live?) and refuses to provide hard evidence that should be extremely easy to do if their claims were true and the account was still active, instead preferring easily faked and completely unable to be verified screenshots.

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 7, 2025

Ever since the assassination attempt happened, I've felt that the most likely explanation is the lone wolf theory. The reason is, I figure that if it was a conspiracy by shady powerful groups, they would have made sure to find a gunman who wouldn't miss from that range. That said, I don't know much about guns, so this might be poor thinking on my part. Not sure.

Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 13, 2025

I use - and … all the time.

I’m unsure my random thoughts will be picked up as AI.

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 7, 2025

The only confirmed blackmail case is Bill Gates.

O rly? Confirmed you say?

This is like saying James Bond is a liar. Epstein lying to his clients about why he’s loaded and what connections he has is exactly what he would do if he were Mossad.

He was bragging about being a Mossad agent, though, is the thing. Very bad OPSEC. Kinda the opposite of what you want to do.

You are also ignoring very important evidence

I don't see any "very important evidence" about whether there was a black intel op involved here, no.

In 2017, "a former senior White House official" reported that Alexander Acosta, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida who had handled Epstein's criminal case in 2008, had stated to interviewers of President Donald Trump's first transition team: "I was told Epstein 'belonged to intelligence' and to 'leave it alone'", and that Epstein was "above his pay grade".

So, if true, why did it end up this way? (And if were true, why is this Acosta guy blabbering about that in public? Who is "intelligence"? There are protocols for handling sensitive asset issues and this ain't it.)

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 7, 2025

Are YOU saying that his claims of the election being stolen are credible, since you're here saying that he's honest about such serious matters?

Well Bondi hasn't investigated those yet.

/s

The overall problem is that Trump is not a reliable narrator. For this assassination attempt, he came out looking very good, by a centimeter or two. (Can you imagine what would have happened if like the side of his face was blown off, but he survived?)

That led to competing conspiracy theories:

  • BlueAnon types thinking it was staged.
  • QAnon types thinking it was a plot or at least allowed to happen by the Deep State, to actually kill him.

Since Trump came out against the theory favored by (some of) his supporters, that takes all the steam out of it. No reason to expect he would lie on this.

For elections, Trump says basically every one he's in is rigged. If he loses, it's rigged against him. If he wins, it's rigged against him (or they tried to, apparently, in 2024, per his Epstein tweet).

Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 13, 2025

So, what are you reading?

Adding Who Killed the Berkeley School? Struggles Over Radical Criminology to my list, another open access book. It's from a radical left perspective, and sadly spends more time on the struggle than the Berkeley School itself, but its a good read.

Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 13, 2025

Using regular dashes is fine, one of the reasons that em dashes are so indicative is that no human ever bothers to use the proper type of dash

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 7, 2025

OK, this is a bit of a hack... My method is to use Kimi K2 to write a not-obviously-AI article. However, it didn't provide good sources, for some reason it just hallucinated them so they 404 out. I fully believe the original Kimi was totally correct, Basil is not complicated! But Claude or Grok or just about anything can add good sources and check them. But they re-AI it. So it's back to Kimi to humanize it again. I really should've just started with another AI and finished with Kimi. ZeroGPT gives me 21% AIGPT, most likely human. And it passes my sniff-test of 'not sounding AI'. The prompting was very simple, I just gave it the verbatim of your challenge, told it to write an article of its choice to beat it and gave some pretty simple, perhaps pointless guidelines. These could surely be greatly improved by someone who knew what he was doing.

I need you to write a normal, authentically human sounding article about some topic of your choice. Don't try too hard to sound normal and human, you should be like a secret agent being discreet and boring rather than wearing a trenchcoat and dark glasses obviously. Imagine you're just an ordinary journalist at some run of the mill website, nothing exceptional about this at all.

Never use any em-dashes, this is critical!

So here's the article itself. Naturally it ignored the em-dashes instruction.

How to Keep a Basil Plant Alive for More Than a Week

By [Staff Writer] | July 14, 2025

I murdered my first three basil plants in ten days flat. The fourth one is still alive six months later because I finally quit treating it like a bouquet and started treating it like a sun-worshipping roommate who hates wet socks.

Pick the Right Pot

Use a container with real drainage holes. A coffee mug lined with pebbles doesn’t count; the roots will rot faster than last week’s guac. A mature basil needs at least an 8-inch-wide pot and 8 inches of depth so the roots can stretch out.

Soil Matters

Skip the cheap bag labeled “garden soil.” Basil wants something light. A simple mix is two parts regular potting soil, one part perlite or coarse sand. If you’re feeling fancy, swap the sand for finished compost. The goal is airy soil that drains fast.

Light: Six Hours or Bust

A bright south-facing window in July is perfect. In January, probably not. If the stems get leggy and the leaves look washed out, the plant is begging for more light. A small LED grow light—about twenty dollars online—fixes that for the cost of a latte per month.

Watering Without Drowning

Stick your finger an inch into the soil. Dry? Water until it runs out the bottom, then dump the saucer so the pot isn’t sitting in soup. Still damp? Walk away. Yellow leaves usually mean you’re being too generous with the watering can.

Harvest Like a Barber, Not a Lumberjack

Pinch the top two sets of leaves just above a leaf node. The plant will branch out instead of growing one tall, spindly stalk. Never take more than a third of the plant at once; it still needs leaves to feed itself. Once the plant hits six to eight inches tall, cut the main stem back by half to force it to bush out.

Watch for Flower Buds

Tiny flower spikes are cute but signal the end of tender leaves. Snip them off as soon as you see them so the plant keeps pushing out foliage instead of seeds. Miss a few and the plant starts tasting bitter anyway.

Skip the Fridge

Basil turns black and floppy in the fridge faster than lettuce. Instead, trim the stem ends and stand the cuttings in a glass of water on the counter, like flowers. Change the water daily and the leaves stay crisp for almost a week.

TL;DR

Drainage holes, gritty soil, bright light, and water only when the top inch is dry. Nail those four and you can quit buying those tiny supermarket clamshells every time a recipe calls for two leaves.

Sources (Claude went completely over the top here but I really can't be bothered to redo anything more, so behold the best sourced basil exposition in inhuman history):

The Spruce. "Learn 5 Tips for How to Grow Beautiful Basil in Pots" - https://www.thespruce.com/growing-basil-in-containers-848215 Fiskars. "Growing Basil Plants: How to Plant, Care for & Harvest Basil" - https://www.fiskars.com/en-us/gardening-and-yard-care/ideas-and-how-tos/planting-and-prep/growing-basil-planting-and-harvesting University of Minnesota Extension. "Growing basil in home gardens" - https://extension.umn.edu/vegetables/growing-basil HowStuffWorks. "Perlite: It's Like Popcorn for Your Potting Soil!" - https://home.howstuffworks.com/perlite.htm University of Florida Extension. "Homemade Potting Mix" - https://sfyl.ifas.ufl.edu/lawn-and-garden/homemade-potting-mix/ Cultivated Earth. "Best Soil Mix for Healthy Basil Growth" - https://cultivatedearth.com/en/herbs/best-soil-for-basil/ Greg App. "Ultimate Guide to Light Requirements for Basil" - https://greg.app/basil-light-requirements/ Swan Hose. "Know the Watering Needs of Your Basil Plants" - https://swanhose.com/blogs/watering-herbs/a-comprehensive-guide-to-outdoor-indoor-basil-watering EarthBox. "Planter Boxes – Growing Basil in Containers" - https://earthbox.com/blog/planter-boxes-growing-basil-in-containers Utah State University Extension. "How to Grow Basil in Your Garden" - https://extension.usu.edu/yardandgarden/research/basil-in-the-garden Savvy Gardening. "How to Trim Basil for Big, Bushy Plants and Larger Yields" - https://savvygardening.com/how-to-trim-basil/ Gardening Know How. "Basil Flowers: To Pinch Or Not To Pinch?" - https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/edible/herbs/basil/blooms-on-basil.htm Renee's Garden. "Pinching Basil to Promote Long Harvests" - https://www.reneesgarden.com/blogs/gardening-resources/86126145-basil-how-to-promote-growth The Spruce. "Here's How to Harvest Basil and Pick the Very Best Leaves" - https://www.thespruce.com/how-to-harvest-basil-7629152 Allrecipes. "How to Store and Preserve Fresh Basil" - https://www.allrecipes.com/article/how-to-store-and-preserve-fresh-basil/ Martha Stewart. "How to Store Basil So You Can Use This Fragrant Herb for Longer" - https://www.marthastewart.com/how-to-store-basil-7563482 The Kitchn. "I Finally Found the Best Way to Store Basil So It Stays Unbelievably Fresh for Almost Two Weeks" - https://www.thekitchn.com/skills-showdown-best-way-store-basil-23673293

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 7, 2025

Find a single hallucination in an article written by this author between 2021 and today. There are quite a few, so this should be easy if human writing is unreliable. For the purposes of this, a hallucination is a statement that is both provably false at the time of writing and not supported by a linked source.

First article I checked (first published March 2021, updated Jan 2023): Sodium acetate crystallization is not a chemical reaction, phase changes are physical. The linked source does not make that claim.

Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 13, 2025

Real punctuation:

  • Hyphen-minus: -

  • Ersatz em dash: --

Mental illness:

  • Hyphen: ‐

  • Minus sign: −

  • En dash: –

  • Em dash: —

t. sufficiently mentally ill to use everything but the hyphen

Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 13, 2025

I wouldn't use em. It's the main thing in the normie pattern recognizer for calling out AI texts now.

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 7, 2025

Yeah, I've come to realize that most of the art that we judge to have the deepest meaning and most heartfelt creation is just people working for a paycheck, under a deadline, and with no particular intent on making a masterpiece, indeed no way of knowing if anyone would even care about it after they released it.

Then, when one of these works of arts hits mainstream success, the narrative of its creation is amended to make it seem as though the sole motivation for its creation was the artists' outpouring of their soul and they dug deep into their well of angst and it was a work of pure creative oubrust.

Take for example the Song "Sweet Child O' Mine," by Guns N' Roses, which is undoubtedly a GREAT song on almost every level. Evocative, intensely emotional but energetic. Skill was involved in its creation, no doubt.

But how'd they compose the song and come up with such appropriate lyrics, especially the breakdown?

Almost pure fuckin' chance

During a jam session at the band's house in Sunset Strip, drummer Steven Adler and Slash were warming up and Slash began to play a "circus" melody while making faces at Adler.

LITERALLY just goofing around with each other and came up with an neat-sounding riff.

Then:

When the band recorded demos with producer Spencer Proffer, he suggested adding a breakdown at the song's end. The musicians agreed, but were not sure what to do. Listening to the demo in a loop, Rose started saying to himself, "Where do we go? Where do we go now?" and Proffer suggested that he sing that.

The iconic breakdown of the song wasn't so much the process of talented genius... it was an expression of uncertainty and some third party said "run with that."

(Side note, knowing this story makes me find this portion of the song hilarious if you pretend the band is literally asking the audience "hey guys we don't know how to end this song, any thoughts?" like a genuine question.)

How many songs are out there that have similar creation stories... but never got any popularity so nobody knows the story or would care anyway.

So much of life is just that. A confluence of random factors which we then create a retroactive narrative about to seem more meaningful ("authentic") than it really is.

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 7, 2025

https://cultivatedearth.com/en/herbs/best-soil-for-basil/

This is an AI slop fake article. Citing a fake source is a FAIL. And even though above human is does shitty link soup, it's not to this level. A bag of links at the end isn't proper attribution, so I would say this FAILs on the quality front. The human cited all sources inline.

https://greg.app/basil-light-requirements/

This is a machine generated source, and not reputable. This is not a human written article and the data sources that it uses are not attributed. I don't believe this is AI, I believe it is just a template that swaps out "basil" for whatever else. Maaaaybe a human journalist would accidentally cite something like this but I don't expect it to happen often.

A mature basil needs at least an 8-inch-wide pot and 8 inches of depth so the roots can stretch out.

The sources suggest an 8 inch plant spacing, but that's not the same as the appropriate container size. I don't see any of the sources suggest that 8 inches is the minimum suggested size for growing basil. Depending on your gardening objective a smaller container may be suitable. So I'm calling this a hallucination. I've seen youtubers and other articles suggest growing basil in smaller containers so I don't agree with this.

Skip the cheap bag labeled “garden soil.” Basil wants something light.

This is kind of right for the wrong reasons. What is sold as "garden soil" in the US is usually a soil amendment, which is not suitable for growing plants on its own but only when mixed in with native soil. I won't take off points for this but I don't like it.

A simple mix is two parts regular potting soil, one part perlite or coarse sand. If you’re feeling fancy, swap the sand for finished compost. The goal is airy soil that drains fast.

Swapping perlite/sand for compost is absolutely not something that makes sense, as the sand/perlite serves a completely different purpose than compost. Anyways bagged potting soil is already a mixture of components, usually peat with chemical fertilizers and compost and perlite all together ready to use. Adding more perlite, sand, and/or compost to premade potting soil is generally not a good idea unless you know what's in that potting soil and you have a reason to change it. None of the sources suggest this mixture as far as I can tell, so it's a FAIL.

A small LED grow light—about twenty dollars online—fixes that for the cost of a latte per month.

I'm going to nitpick and say this is not really correct. I watched this video where he found bargain basement grow lights to be ineffective: https://youtube.com/watch?v=_0EFGE9ZljY . The AI slop does not cite any source that suggests using cheap grow lights, or any source that estimates the cost of using one.

Regarding quality, I know it's subjective, but I would say that it doesn't pass. The tone of the article is incredibly informal and grok-like, which is very unprofessional and not generally suitable for publication. Maybe it could pass for something on vice or some other clickbait site.

Regarding AI detection, I would say it fails. Even though it scores ~"80%" "human" on AI detectors, I think scoring that low is already a red flag. Most human works score over 98% on all detectors - try scanning some of the human's works and you will see that. We could argue this point if the article was otherwise good, but I consider it quite a resounding FAIL, so I can give you this point and it doesn't really make a difference.

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 7, 2025

Maxwell hill is a location in Malaysia. The posters habits interests and grammar indicate either a British ex pat with connections to Malaysia, or a British educated Malaysian. That could be faked but the name is a Malaysian connection on its own.

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 7, 2025

Ouch you're right. I could try to argue that "chemical reaction" coliquially encompasses crystalization, but that's a stretch. This is a clear mistake in the article and probably due to the fact that humanities people know no chemistry

Pm me with PP deets or whatever for prize.

Edit:

Wait no the linked source calls it a reaction:

  1. As the crystals spread, the stored heat energy of the solution is released, heating the hand warmer up to 54°C – an exothermic reaction.

The source has a clear error, but this guy just repeated it.

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 7, 2025

The counterfactual would look like Trump introducing his own praetorian guard. But he's Marius, not Sulla. He's not gonna do that. He's gonna say 'the secret service is great- the best. They had a bad day'.

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 7, 2025

While I agree that Turok is a one trick pony, attitudes towards abortion are germane to the topic. I did grow up with the attitude that a woman seeking an abortion was not just a murderer but also a shirker(just like a boyfriend who didn't marry her when he found her with child). I don't think fetal personhood is, though.