An update on what I've been up to

I have been publishing less in the past month, as some of you have noticed. A couple thoughts around that and more!

By now, you have probably heard about Substack’s partnership with Pangram. The whole concept of an AI-powered AI-detector is beyond intellectually insulting.

I have never used LLMs for anything, and I intend to keep it that way. I am also vigorously opposed to any of my work being fed to LLMs.

Beyond the fact that not using AI to write makes my output slower than people who do, having to deal with slop-saturated spaces online makes research slower. It means so much more time spent trying to check sources, to make sure they’re sturdy and not hallucinated. The research I do regarding fixed stars is already very time-consuming, each deep-dive article being years in the making1.

I’m not interested in adding to the slop, and because slop abounds, doing not-slop takes longer!