Welcome to PizzaNet!
Welcome to PizzaNet!
Hello there :)
Welcome to issue eighty five of Manufacturing Serendipity, a loosely connected, somewhat rambling collection of the unexpected things I’ve recently encountered.
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Speaking of coffee, grab yourself a suitable beverage my loves, let’s do this thing…
First, a little shameless self-promotion…
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Part I: Things I’ve been thinking about…
Stories, stories, and more stories. I mentioned last time that I’d set myself a challenge to write 100 stories in 100 days, and I’ve now written 27 stories in 27 days - yay!
Real life got in the way a couple of times, which meant that I had to write two stories a day for couple of days to catch up. I did not love this, but I’m sure it will happen again. I’ve decided that as long as I write 100 stories within the 100 days it’s fine.
So far I’ve spent over 55 hours doing this, but timing-wise it’s all over the place. The longest I’ve spent on a single story is over 3 and half hours, and the quickest one I’ve written took 35 minutes. I feel like there’s little to no relationship between time spent and how “good” the story is — instead it seems to be the case that sometimes I find writing easier, and other times I find it harder.
At this point I’m reasonably sure I’ll complete the challenge, if only because it’s quickly becoming apparent to me that it’s just a case of doing the thing.
I’ll let you know how I’m getting on next time.
Serendipitous finds
What the Internet Looked Like in 1994
Delving Deep: The telltale words that could identify generative AI text
New research identifies which words have started appearing more often in the post-LLM era.
“A group of researchers has established a novel method for estimating LLM usage across a large set of scientific writing by measuring which "excess words" started showing up much more frequently during the LLM era (i.e., 2023 and 2024). The results "suggest that at least 10% of 2024 abstracts were processed with LLMs," according to the researchers.
In a pre-print paper posted earlier this month, four researchers from Germany's University of Tubingen and Northwestern University said they were inspired by studies that measured the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic by looking at excess deaths compared to the recent past. By taking a similar look at "excess word usage" after LLM writing tools became widely available in late 2022, the researchers found that "the appearance of LLMs led to an abrupt increase in the frequency of certain style words" that was "unprecedented in both quality and quantity."
To measure these vocabulary changes, the researchers analyzed 14 million paper abstracts published on PubMed between 2010 and 2024, tracking the relative frequency of each word as it appeared across each year. They then compared the expected frequency of those words (based on the pre-2023 trendline) to the actual frequency of those words in abstracts from 2023 and 2024, when LLMs were in widespread use.
The results found a number of words that were extremely uncommon in these scientific abstracts before 2023 that suddenly surged in popularity after LLMs were introduced. The word "delves", for instance, shows up in 25 times as many 2024 papers as the pre-LLM trend would expect; words like "showcasing" and "underscores" increased in usage by nine times as well.”
Melodies in chart-topping music have become less complex
“Won’t you play a simple melody,” sang Bing Crosby in his rendition of the Irving Berlin classic. Now it seems his wish has come true: research has revealed the tunes of modern chart-toppers are less complex than those of the past.
Scientists say the change could – at least in part – be down to the emergence of new genres over the decades, such as stadium rock, disco and hip-hop.
However, Madeline Hamilton, a co-author of the research from Queen Mary University of London, said the results did not mean music was dumbing down.
“My guess is that other aspects of music are getting more complex and melodies are getting simpler as a way to compensate,” Hamilton said, noting that while music in earlier decades was made with a handful of instruments – meaning complexity tended to be added through vocals – modern tracks involved many layers and sound textures.”
What Game of Thrones did to the media
For a crucial decade in print media’s transition to the internet, HBO’s fantasy series Game of Thrones was a boon in traffic… for everyone. But what happened when every publication started chasing the same thing?
Nick Gentry’s Technological Portraits
“In Skin Deep, Nick Gentry probes the “chasm between real and online personas.” Working on painted backdrops of outdated technology like floppy disks and VHS tapes, the artist invites questions that are uniquely contemporary, asking about performance and presentation on the internet, increasingly artificial standards of beauty, and the instability of memory over time.
Diverging from his earlier portraits that were more faithful to a subject’s likeness, Gentry’s new body of work is deeply influenced by the virtual. He often paints his figures in grayscale, leaving them devoid of defining characteristics, and uses the tape’s plastic reels to highlight their eyes. This melding of human and machine elicits the cold, detached feeling associated with a cyborg and emphasizes the synthetic, masked nature of online identities. Given the irrelevance of the once-groundbreaking technology, the portraits also speak to the inevitable shifts in importance and how information is stored, shared, and remembered.”
Part II: Books I’m Reading Right Now
Jewel Box: Stories, E. Lily Yu — folkloric and science fiction tales sit side-by-side in this gorgeous collection: a lamp post falls in love; there’s a cyberpunk retelling of the Orpheus and Eurydice; alien refugees arrive on earth; and a judge who prides himself on impartiality finds himself questioned by a mysterious god.
Part III: Things I’ve Been Watching
Eric (Netflix) — set in 1980s New York, this six-part series focuses largely on Vincent (played by Benedict Cumberbatch), a puppeteer and the creative genius behind Good Day Sunshine, a Sesame Street-style children’s show. When his nine-year-old son Edgar goes missing on his way to school, Vincent becomes convinced that if he brings “Eric” (the puppet his son has been working on) to life, his son will return. The show packs in a huge number of themes and plotlines (possibly too many?), but overall it’s excellent and well worth your time.
Bay of Fires (ITV+) — Billed as darkly comic crime thriller, I watched this hoping for something akin to DeadLoch (Amazon Prime), but that’s not what I got. A high powered business woman is forced to go on-the-run with her two young children and winds up in a very strange small town in Tasmania. Honestly, it’s not so much that this show is bad, it’s more than it doesn’t know what it is. The twists aren’t that twisty, the script is often lazy, and nothing quite coheres. If I were you, I’d skip it.
Part IV: What I’ve been up to…
Thinking about writing stories, actually writing stories, a wonderful weekend away with Mum, met up with friends for lunches and drinks, and I finally dealt with a bunch of life admin.
What’s next?
I am excited about:
Going away with my Dad
Hatching plans
Launching a new thing soon
Moar shameless self-promotion
I’m emceeing WTSFest USA in Philadelphia on September 19th. The line up looks amazing, and there are still a few tickets available. Get yours before they’re gone.
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That’s all from me for now :)
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Please note, various life happenings are messing with my publishing schedule over the next month or two. The next issue of this newsletter will land in your inboxes in early August.
Big love,
Hannah x
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