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Fixed a typo: Our friends lost their baby at 8 1/2 months, not weeks.

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💔💔💔💕

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1. No, but I've been thinking about reaching out to a company I super dig and offering my writing/editing services part time. Is that crazy? Probably. They probably won't hire me, but it's worth a shot.

2. ah ChatGPT. I skipped the department meeting that first talked about ChatGPT this year (let's be honest, I've skipped most of them), but I did hear that one person dramatically claimed it was "the end of the written word." LOLOLOLOL.

Two of my most himbo students asked me if they could redesign our seating chart today in the form of a maze. They were definitely not going to do the thing we were actually doing, so I told them to submit a proposal and I would review it. They sketched it out (my favorite part being named the "Ms. Valle Highway") and then one of them followed up with an essay about the benefits of moving seats in class. Of course, our good friend ChatGPT wrote it and everyone laughed when I revealed this in class. Love those boys.

3. I don't know. But it makes me feel very small. I know I can't fix all the things, but it feels very pointless to be trying to teach the youth what a topic sentence is when people are getting gunned down for knocking on the wrong door or you know, simply existing. I can't stop thinking about it, so instead I'm eating a lot of chocolate and pretending my clothes aren't fitting a little snugger than they were a few months ago haha.

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Ah Jen, I’m sending love to your community and to your friends grieving. I may have more thoughts about your (as always) multi-thought-provoking piece, but for now I’m just sitting with the loss. And remembering how much it meant to have friends and neighbors just sit with us, too.

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I’m sorry to hear about your friends. That’s an especially cruel turn of events.

My first W2 job was at off brand IHOP. I was the dishwasher, and it was every bit as terrible as you might think. Half of us quit at once one night, which tbh, might be the highlight of my time working there.

I have earned money from writing, but that wasn’t always the case. I’m still genuinely thrilled anytime someone upgrades their subscription and supports my work.

As for AI, I flip back and forth between being fascinated by it and being so over it. Between the fear mongering and tech bros trying to sell us on it, it’s just... a lot. I do agree with Brian that it won’t replace authenticity in writing. And since he’s from the future, he’s already seen how this’ll all play out.

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I’ve played around with chatgpt because I’ve always been working in digital, tech, and marketing space intersection. I used it for Instagram post and had to rewrite it. Still I appreciate the hashtags suggestions. Those generally take a while to generate.

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ChatGPT will only get better from here, and relatively quickly. The maddening catch 22 is that the more you write, ie the more “you” that’s out there, the more it will have to work with when it impersonates you.

I had an unnerving experience recently. I was doing some study of a biblical story for an academic group I belong to. I was reading a short essay in a volume of commentaries, got to the end and was astonished to see that I had written it. I remember writing for the series years ago, but not that specific essay. The unnerving part was the realization that if ChatGPT gets good enough to impersonate me, I may not be able to tell the difference simply because I won’t remember what’s mine and what isn’t! The perils of being at this for decades now.

The world’s about to get a whole lot weirder.

I’m so very sorry for your community’s loss.

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