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Macmillan Staff Say the Publisher Threw a Party for a Workplace AI Assistant That Was Later Killed

Workers tell WIRED that NOA—or “No Ordinary Assistant”—was unhelpful. Bestselling authors also say AI is ruining their relationships with Big Five publishers.


If publishers can't be arsed to do their jobs, and editors are fobbing off their work on AI, then why should an author bother with them at all? Well, historically, a main selling point of conventional publishing was the marketing reach.

Now however, that may backfire. If I see a book with a shitty AI cover and shitty AI cover text, I tend to think that the contents are also shitty and nobody cared to do a decent job with it. I'm not going to pick it up. I'm pretty sure other readers feel the same way.

So if the major publishers are embracing AI, that makes it hard for them to protest authors using AI to generate slop stories. In the end, it creates a business opportunity for any publisher who wants to advertise "all human writing, editing, art, and publishing."

Today we went up to Champaign-Urbana with a friend.

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Forgotten sea creature is found hiding in centuries-old paintings

For centuries, a strange spiny mollusk was hiding in some of the most famous kitchens of Italian Baroque art. It was painted with exquisite accuracy, served at Neapolitan market stalls, and hawked by street vendors in comic opera.

Yet, almost nobody in the scientific record noticed it was there. A new study has now retrieved the ecological history of the thorny oyster (Spondylus gaederopus). The researchers used old masters’ canvases, dialect dictionaries, naturalists’ field notes, and the memories of an octogenarian fisherman. This helped them build a portrait of a creature that was once familiar to Mediterranean coastal communities.


Still life art creates a surprisingly useful record of plants, animals, and objects.

50+ Still life drawing ideas for Art students

"So Monumental and Still" has a lot more about still life.

Yosemite’s green meadows are hiding a 150-year-old problem

Yosemite's Tuolumne Meadows are losing soil carbon more than a century after heavy sheep grazing, and restoring the damaged ecosystem could take decades.


Yikes. This makes me wonder about the United Kingdom, where sheep have stripped most places. They have some great rewilding programs ... but those are measuring green cover and species diversity, not carbon.

This is an advance announcement for the Tuesday, November 3, 2026 Poetry Fishbowl. This time the theme will be "Intentional Community." I'll be soliciting ideas for communards, neighbors, communitarians, hippies, Native American tribes, caregivers, first responders, clergy, outreach workers, artists, writers, polyfamilies, ethicists, activists, volunteers, handyworkers, repairmen, teachers, parents, comares, immigrants, superheroes, supervillains; from Daughters of the Apocalypse: armeys, carneys, muneys, naveys; other communal people, starting a community, living together, moving into a new home, welcoming the neighbors, lending a hand, responding to emergencies, volunteering, making donations, supporting people in hard times, learning to trust others, offering crash space, helping someone move, recommoning (creating space where people can share and tend land in relationship), placemaking, planting trees, creating intimacy, making friends, getting to know each other, cooking together, discovering things, improvising, adapting, cooperating, bartering, sharing, fixing what's broke, changing the world, accomplishing the impossible, intentional communities, communes, artist colonies, cohousing, sharehouses, boarding houses, common houses, planned communities, other polyhomes, Native American reservations, Triton Teen Centers, the Peace Store, food coops and other cooperatives, amenity floors, charities, homeless shelters, clothing banks, food pantries, soup kitchens, sobering centers, community clinics, mentor circles, support groups, churches, gay bars, feminist bookstores, social justice departments in schools, clubs, inclusive workplaces, Thalassia, the Maldives, the Lacuna, Rutledge, Emerald Mountain Glen (a hippie commune near Rutledge), LunaRest (an art colony near Rutledge), Ville de Roses (a French intentional village near Rutledge), Homemade Families classes, community gardens, other communal hangouts, intentional neighboring, interfaith work, diversity, inclusivity, housewarming parties, First Year clubs for people new in town, participatory decision-making, altruism, family dynamics, alternative family structures, partnerships not based on sex/romance, emotional closeness, nonsexual intimacies, first contact, interspecies relationships, trial and error, trust issues, teamwork, found family, complementary strengths and weaknesses, personal growth, and poetic forms in particular.


Among my more relevant series for the main theme:

An Army of One has most people living in tight-knit communities because they are in space.

Arts and Crafts America includes the Draft Dawgs Veteran Shelter.

The Bear Tunnels features historic tribal villages.

The Blueshift Troupers travel the galaxy helping colonies solve problems.

A Conflagration of Dragons leaves people to rely on each other or die.

Coracle Shores features people fleeing climate change into a faeryland of small villages.

Daughters of the Apocalypse relies a lot on mutual aid for survival. Armeys are military bands. Carneys travel together in caravans. Muneys share a commune. Naveys are nautical bands.
* Lazarus Lake
* Nadie's family farm
* Ninovan from "The Trail of Hope"
* Rainbow Hills

Fiorenza the Wisewoman lives in a small, tight-knit village.

Frankenstein's Family has diverse subgroups interacting to help each other.

Hart's Farm is a free love commune.

The Moon Door features a women's chronic pain support group, which involves a lot of intentional neighboring.

One God's Story of Mid-Life Crisis involves a close religious community.

Peculiar Obligations includes Quaker communities and pirate islands.

Polychrome Heroics has ordinary humans, supernaries, blue-plate specials, superheroes, supervillains, primal and animal soups all trying to get along together. Relevant threads include Antimatter and Stalwart Stan, the Big One, Cuoio and Chiara, Iron Horses, Officer Pink, Pain's Gray, Rutledge, Shiv , and Trichromatic Attachments. I encourage readers to prompt for any of the large casts and complex settings that I have already developed, such as:
* the bohemian folks at Hanson Hall in Omaha, Nebraska
* Prairie Meadows Cohousing Community and Mayfield Meadows Farm near Omaha, Nebraska
* Fertile Acres Farm just outside of Omaha, Nebraska (introduced in "So Monumental and Still")
* Woolgather Hill near Omaha, Nebraska
* the Mori no Tami and their allies at Mori no Mura in Humboldt County, California
* the hippies of Emerald Mountain Glen in Vermont
* the people and place of Fire Mountain Farm in Vermont
* Lazy Maple Lane near Rutledge, Vermont
* Bumbleberry Acres, a farm just southwest of Rutledge, Vermont (introduced in "Do Something Different Inside")
* the rescued sexbots in Thalassia
* the rescued primals now at the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana
* Havre Hobby Habitat in Montana
* the Withering Heights LARP in Colorado
* the Solace polycule in Atlanta, Georgia
* Nicholson family farm near Bluehill, Missouri
* the cohousing and polycule in Portland, Oregon
* the various polycules from "A Celebration and a Consolation" out east

Quixotic Ideas is set in a world with plenty of magic and a positive tone, where people often help each other and solve challenges peacefully.

Schrodinger's Heroes save the world from alternate dimensions, and they take care of each other.

Walking the Beat is lesbian romance with a lot of intentional neighboring.

Or you can ask for something new.

For boosting the signal, you can reveal a verse of any open linkback poem.

If you're interested, mark the date on your calendar, and please hold actual prompts until the "Poetry Fishbowl Open" post next week. (If you're not available that day, or you live in a time zone that makes it hard to reach me, you can leave advance prompts. I am now.) Meanwhile, if you want to help with promotion, please feel free to link back here or repost this on your blog.

( New to the fishbowl? Read all about it! )

Today we enjoyed two full moon activities.

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