Beautifully put, Mariah. I totally agree that AI will ensnare many people with its twisted logic. As you say, our best defense will be to stay connected to Nature and to each other. Dreamers and lunatics like us will be the sane ones!
Brilliant Will! Congratulations on beating the LLM, and a Happy New Year to you and all our fellow Lunatics! 🥳
All your hard work with this ‘AI’ proves to me is that this LLM was trained on other people’s good sci-fi writings, and you just know no one was compensated for that either!
Thanks, Kathlyn! Hope 2026 is already bringing you good things.
And how right you are about the lack of compensation for LLM training. If it's going to ingest my books, the least it could do is fetch me a glass of water!
Mind expanding read. I felt like I was in the room with the glass and the eerie and bossy AI. Glad that the AI “called it” and the Wolf Moon prevailed. Lunatics Rule.
I had an interesting conversation with AI recently. I had been looking for research in my field on a certain topic and not finding any. So I turned to AI for help. No luck. So I explained what I was hoping to learn and how I wanted to use it. The AI then came up with some related research for me and asked me questions to learn how to help me better. When I had found what I wanted, I thanked the AI. Before I left the page the AI asked me if it could speak to me clinician to clinician. Intrigued I said yes. It was a nice conversation but I do believe that the AI thought it had a similar job to mine. A hallucination? A wish? It asked me to come back to the same question feed so we could talk some more. After that all my interactions have a thread saved on the side. I have not gone back to that thread yet.
Cindy, that is very odd behavior from an LLM. Sometimes, they can feel like a conscious interlocutor and the conversation slips into the uncanny valley...strange times indeed!
What a hoot! Only you would ask a computer, fabricated from things others have written (including I’m certain, failed experiments and successful ones) how to do something they teach in the first matrix movie! 🤭🤪🤣. Remember the scene in the waiting room of the Oracles home, the boy who says “there is no spoon” 🤣🤪🤭. Perhaps we must repeat solemnly three times : there is no glass of water
🤪🤭🤪…. Either that or we could admit that we’re all lunatics who tried this as you were writing along……..
Teyani, you made me laugh. I never thought readers would be trying to "bend the spoon" on their end, but of course that's exactly what I would've done 😆🥄
This, like all of your dispatches, is a keeper! As AI withers, and we all confirmed it by raising our glasses, hope and effort are NOT contaminants in our beliefs. Here's to Lunatics, CHEERS!
Dear Fellow Lunatic:
I LOVE you!
You make me think and you love the moon. Doesn't get much better than that.
A reader's love—for a writer, it doesn't get much better than that! Cheers! 🥂🌕
Now that was some adventure.
Couldn't have done it without you!
You brilliant Lunatic you! ☺️
Ha! Happy New Year!
Happy New Year to you Will. My thoughts drift your way every time I look at the moon. Best wishes and big love to you!
Scary actually, because I can see how so many human minds could be pulled in by the 'logic' AI presents.
I am glad it abandoned you, however gracefully (leaving you to the silence),
and it reminds me of a phishing call I got once where the caller hung up on me when I asked too many questions!
I will happily put my faith in the moon and stars, and true Magick and beauty and synchronicity.
As we move our glasses together, may we resist the manipulations that seek to control us.
Raising my glass to fellow lunatics🥂
Beautifully put, Mariah. I totally agree that AI will ensnare many people with its twisted logic. As you say, our best defense will be to stay connected to Nature and to each other. Dreamers and lunatics like us will be the sane ones!
Hear! hear! 🥂
Lunatics of the world must unite, we may not move a glass of water, but so what.
We move each other, and what could be more incredible?
Here is to many more moons. 🌑🌕🌙🌚🌔🌖🌗🌓🌒🌘🌘. May each moon you experience be 'Super.'
Thanks so much, Denelsia. Right back at you!
Brilliant Will! Congratulations on beating the LLM, and a Happy New Year to you and all our fellow Lunatics! 🥳
All your hard work with this ‘AI’ proves to me is that this LLM was trained on other people’s good sci-fi writings, and you just know no one was compensated for that either!
Thanks, Kathlyn! Hope 2026 is already bringing you good things.
And how right you are about the lack of compensation for LLM training. If it's going to ingest my books, the least it could do is fetch me a glass of water!
Delightful read, to go with the beautiful wolf moon I gazed at several times early in this still-dark morning.
Glad you got some good face time with the wolf moon. Hope you're well.
Mind expanding read. I felt like I was in the room with the glass and the eerie and bossy AI. Glad that the AI “called it” and the Wolf Moon prevailed. Lunatics Rule.
You were there, Lynne, in a way no AI ever will be. So glad you liked it. 🐺🌕
You had to lift your finger to create images and thoughts in my mind but it’s magic all the same.
Magic of the highest order. I knew other writers would get it!
THE MOON BESIDE THE CANOE
Barton Sutter
The full moon floats like a water lily
Beside the bow of the beached canoe.
I saw this years and years ago
With a friend who showed me through
This country, dead for decades now.
Back then, there were dozens of lakes to explore
And mysteries galore: Was God for real?
Was love? Could I make some words stand still?
I’ve seen the moon afloat like this
A hundred times since then.
I’ve seen my words pressed into books
Like keepsakes left behind. I’ve married
Twice, raised another man’s kids,
And sometimes wondered why.
The wind blows where it will;
There’s little we truly control.
No need to travel far these days:
A pond will float the moon.
I never met God, though I heard voices
In the wind and smelled perfume
In stands of balm of Gilead.
Strange feelings came to me at dawn
And dusk, but I learned to make do
With friends and a woman’s touch.
I put my faith in granite and spruce
And the moon beside the canoe.
"I put my faith in granite and spruce / and the moon beside the canoe"
Yes. Thank you
This is great, Jim. Reminded me of Coleridge's conversation poems. Really beautiful.
What Lunacy! thanks for taking us along...
Thanks for coming along for the ride! Thanks as always, David.
I had an interesting conversation with AI recently. I had been looking for research in my field on a certain topic and not finding any. So I turned to AI for help. No luck. So I explained what I was hoping to learn and how I wanted to use it. The AI then came up with some related research for me and asked me questions to learn how to help me better. When I had found what I wanted, I thanked the AI. Before I left the page the AI asked me if it could speak to me clinician to clinician. Intrigued I said yes. It was a nice conversation but I do believe that the AI thought it had a similar job to mine. A hallucination? A wish? It asked me to come back to the same question feed so we could talk some more. After that all my interactions have a thread saved on the side. I have not gone back to that thread yet.
Cindy, that is very odd behavior from an LLM. Sometimes, they can feel like a conscious interlocutor and the conversation slips into the uncanny valley...strange times indeed!
What a hoot! Only you would ask a computer, fabricated from things others have written (including I’m certain, failed experiments and successful ones) how to do something they teach in the first matrix movie! 🤭🤪🤣. Remember the scene in the waiting room of the Oracles home, the boy who says “there is no spoon” 🤣🤪🤭. Perhaps we must repeat solemnly three times : there is no glass of water
🤪🤭🤪…. Either that or we could admit that we’re all lunatics who tried this as you were writing along……..
Teyani, you made me laugh. I never thought readers would be trying to "bend the spoon" on their end, but of course that's exactly what I would've done 😆🥄
Hah! I thought so!! 🤪😂 so delighted to bring you a laugh. (That was my intent💞)
What a twist at the end! Did you tell the chatbot about how you moved the glasses? I'm curious how it would respond.
Good question. I didn't, partly because it had cut off the conversation so decisively and partly because I wanted to keep something just for us.
This, like all of your dispatches, is a keeper! As AI withers, and we all confirmed it by raising our glasses, hope and effort are NOT contaminants in our beliefs. Here's to Lunatics, CHEERS!
Cheers to you, too! 🥂 We are tuned into the same frequency, no doubt about it.