Scientific Reports did not have what one would call a sterling reputation prior to this. Mathematical physicist John Baez wrote,

If you’re a physics crackpot who wants to publish in a prestigious-sounding journal, I recommend Nature Scientific Reports! You have a good chance of getting your paper in!

Try making it look like “Mass–Energy Equivalence Extension onto a Superfluid Quantum Vacuum”. […] This paper looks like a lot of the emails I get. It would never be published in a serious physics journal:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-48018-2

And it’s not the only crackpot physics paper that’s been published by Nature Scientific Reports!

Here’s a much crazier paper in Nature Scientific Reports:

https://nature.com/articles/s41598-019-46765-w

It’s called Maximum Entropy (Most Likely) Double Helical and Double Logarithmic Spiral Trajectories in Space-Time. You have to read it!

My guess is that Nature Scientific Reports doesn’t have mechanisms built in to enforce the oppressive hidebound orthodoxy that dominates the other physics journals. So if you have a revolutionary new theory, submit your paper here!!!

Flavio Nogueira in the comments:

I have been in a meeting with the editors of SRs and its editor in chief years ago during an APS March Meeting. I can tell you that some editors were truly pissed off, as papers rejected after peer reviewing ended up being published anyway…

What word do they want to unambiguously represent that concept now?

“Literally, not figuratively”, said in a Sterling Archer voice.

The use of literally in a fashion that is hyperbolic or metaphoric is not new—evidence of this use dates back to 1769. Its inclusion in a dictionary isn’t new either; the entry for literally in our 1909 unabridged dictionary states that the word is “often used hyperbolically; as, he literally flew.”

— Merriam-Webster

Out of all the documentation pages written by the most pedantic nerds on Earth (complimentary), I think this just might be the shortest.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Writing_articles_with_large_language_models

Not all, but more than half (at ICLR).

There’s a PubPeer thread.

Good day to remember the rat dck pck.

And this is not the first time Scientific Reports has been sneered.

… Autons?

Tag yourself, I’m “runctitional features”

I’ve been nursing a grudge against New York Magazine for fifteen years.

From the r/SunoAI subreddit: “Sick of having to come up with prompts”.

Hey y’all, looking for some tips here. I like what I’ve made so far with Suno but now I’m kind of hitting a wall with ideas for prompts. Why doesn’t Suno also have a feature to write prompts for you? Like just hit a button the says “new prompt” and then hit make song when it comes up with something that sounds interesting! Thoughts?

(Via Dan of the Year.)

Bloomberg covers the disastrous impact of AI upon food recipes, while still putting an “AI overview” on the top of the page…

In interviews, 22 independent food creators said that AI-generated “recipe slop” is distorting nearly every way people find cooking advice online, damaging their businesses while causing consumers to waste time and money.

Across the internet, writers say their vetted recipes are hidden by the flood. Pinterest feeds are stuffed with AI-generated images of food that the attached instructions won’t achieve; Google’s AI Overviews surface error-filled cooking steps that siphon away clicks from professionals. Meanwhile, Facebook content farms use AI-generated images of supposedly delicious but impossible dishes to the top of people’s feeds, in an attempt to turn any clicks into ad revenue.

All of this, food bloggers say, erodes the simple promise of a recipe: that someone has actually cooked it before you have. To Gargano, this is the core issue. “No matter how clever the AI is,” she said in a recent interview, “it can never actually test a recipe in a real kitchen and see how it works.”

[…]

For Carrie Forrest, who runs Clean Eating Kitchen, AI has been devastating: 80% of her traffic — and her revenue — has disappeared in two years. Although the views started dropping when OpenAI’s ChatGPT was released, it wasn’t until Google launched AI Mode in search that her traffic collapsed, she said. Since then, she’s gone from employing about ten people to letting everyone go. “I’m going to have to find something else to do.”

This holiday season is on track to be Forrest’s slowest in years. She fears that if more content creators give up, the AI won’t have new content to draw from — except content generated by AI. It may get to a point where “AI is just talking to itself,” and home cooks are gambling with the results, she said.

yes indeedy

AI preprints : peer review :: Scott Aaronson : cops

Somehow, HPMoR could have been even worse.

I ruled no intelligence enhancement magic in HPMOR because otherwise it turns into Project Lawful.

https://xcancel.com/allTheYud/status/1992265494507008382#m

Step 1. Get a silly idea

2. Develop the silly idea as seriously as possible for love of the craft

3. Continue because it’s cheaper than therapy

4. Push yourself to finish because by Gad 2020 needed a counterweight

5. Invent a new fantasy setting and rewrite whole chunks because Neil Gaiman went and smegshake ducked himself

“Nano banana pro” sounds like a relic of tiki fashion that manages to be racist in a way we have mostly forgotten.

Hey, I’ve revised my fanfiction, too.

I am still avoiding YouTube, so I guess “hj” will mean handjob forever.

Both follow-up tweets end in periods, so I guess he transitioned to being completely serious 1/3 of the way through? Or maybe a missing period means a joke, a present period means he’s serious, and partial periodization means that he’s typing with one hand.

Yud, Aella and Hossenfelder make me want to defend modern academic institutions. Granted, that’s not nearly as impressive as Scott Aaronson getting me to sympathize with a cop, but it’s still an achievement.