Odd Week, That

So apparently, Anthropic's AI used my collection, Live Nude Aliens and Other Stories, to train itself. Granted, it falls among a lot of texts, but it's an odd sort of compliment and an affront. In an American lawsuit, Anthropic agreed to pay $1.5 billion in damages to authors whose books they scraped from pirating sites for the purpose of training their generative. The settlement only applies to American authors, but a Canadian lawsuit may follow. My sister Jo (whose book Just Gone was also among those scraped, along with one of her academic papers) and I have both filed our names, in the event of a Canadian settlement coming through within our lifetime.

The American settlement (which would amount, reportedly, to about $3,000.00 for each book used) has already encountered obstructions.

And then there was my passing encounter with "Canada's second-greatest rapper," my online entanglement with a celebrated best-selling

^{I could go crazy on a night like tonight}

^{When summer's beginning to give up her fight}

September is both an end and a beginning

the gradual change of seasons

While others see a descent into winter, 

I have always embraced the return to school,

My life with Apple's iPhone personal assistant

""
—

This is one of those things I told myself I'd never use due to being gimmicky and likely of zero value to me, and to my enormous surprise it's proved itself really quite handy.

Now don't go overboard and think that I've gone over to the other side to be converted to the Cult of Cupertino.