the zine is now called dark times, with wine dark as the publishing arm and “a golden dark age” as the preface
joe pivoted main character corps from social scraper to a terra ignota-flavored visual novel with greek key ui and peptide stack character builds
canvas was ransomewared by shinyhunters during finals week, affecting 9,000 institutions; the chat responded with memes and systemic analysis in equal measure
robotson descended deeper into media theory, meeting a phd curator and debating whether artspeak is institutional necessity or cognitohazard
jake and others discussed the emerging pressure to write “worse” than ai, and whether this performative bad grammar will ever relax
the day
dark times, officially: after weeks of “wine dark 001” working titles, joe and the chat converged on “dark times” as the zine name, with “a golden dark age” as preface and “wine dark” as the publishing/social arm. picrew and vince staples were discussed and ultimately overcome.
main character corps v0.3: having abandoned the social-scraper abyss, joe rebuilt the project as a bg3-style character creator / visual novel. the ui now features greek key borders, biome selection (step 3 of 11), and build options including peptide stacks and saas government subscriptions. described as “terra ignota flavored agi bratton fanfiction.”
canvas ransomewared: fred broke news that canvas (instructure) was breached by shinyhunters, with a ransom demand and 9,000 schools potentially affected. robotson posted the ransom note screenshot. david argued centralized vs bespoke edtech security is a temporary distinction since automated exploitation is asymptotically approaching zero. joe noted the ransom note had “outer glow vibe code smells.” word asked if bespoke hosting would help. the chat also produced cat memes.
theory jargon as cognitohazard: robotson shared plans to meet a latin american digital art curator/phd candidate. jay sent links to a diffusion-powered point-and-click engine (diffusiontime / moldandyeast). this sparked a long thread on whether academic artspeak is necessary poetry, institutional performance, or grant-application totem. joe called it insecurity cover for worrying your field isn’t substantive. robotson defended it as required self-flagellation for patrons. word shared henry flynt.
anti-ai writing styles: jake observed that people now feel pressure to avoid ai-like writing registers — fewer em dashes, less formal polish — even though models trained on human text. he wondered when everyone will relax. fred celebrated it as a license to write weirder. the wsj article on writers deliberately using bad grammar was shared. homer diagnosed himself as “patient zero and also the vaccine.”
misc: m coined “highfuckingstupidly.” word wrote a typewriter poem about mycocosms and considered doing a farmers market poetry set. jay shared the techno-optimism archive and recommended “wired love” (1879 telegraph romance). jazzbard shared a postman-with-antenna pic.
