“Conspiracy” is a colorful way of describing what might boil down to Gagniuc and two publicists, or something like that, since one person can hop across multiple IP addresses, etc. But, I mean, a pitifully tiny conspiracy still counts (and is, IMO, even funnier).

A comment by Wikipedia editor David Eppstein, theoretical computer science prof at UC Irvine:

Despite Malparti warning that “it would be a waste of time for everyone” I took a look at the book myself. 60 pages of badly-worded boring worked examples with no theory before we even get to the possibility of having more than two states. As Malparti said, there is no theory, or rather theory is alluded to in vague and inaccurate form without any justification. For instance the steady state (still of a two-state chain) is first mentioned on 46 as “the unique solution” to an equilibrium equation, and is stated to be “eventually achieved”, with no discussion of exceptional cases where the solution is not unique or not reached in the limit, and no discussion of the fact that it is never actually achieved, only found in the limit. Do not use for anything. I should have taken the fact that I could not find a review even on MR and zbl as a warning.

It’s been a while since I’ve seen a math book review that said “Do not use for anything.”

“This book is not a place of honor…”

Sometimes, checking the Talk page of a Wikipedia article can be entertaining.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Markov_chain#Proposal_to_reintroduce_peer-reviewed_source_(Wiley,_2017)

In short: There has been a conspiracy to insert citations to a book by a certain P. Gagniuc into Wikipedia. This resulted in said book gaining about 900 citations on Google Scholar from people who threw in a footnote for the definition of a Markov chain. The book, Markov Chains: From Theory to Implementation and Experimentation (2017), is actually really bad. Some of the comments advocating for its inclusion read like chatbot (bland, generic, lots of bullet points). Another said that it should be included because it’s “the most reliable book on the subject, and the one that is part of ChatGPT training set”.

This has been argued out over at least five different discussion pages.

Autocorrect-ism for “metaverse”, perhaps?

Sheesh. Everyone knows you keep the phenethylamines inside the fridge proper, not on the door, where the temperature is less stable. (Source: the Shulgins’ Kitchen Procedures I Have Known And Loved.)

Charts 5 and 7 in particular are giving Pyramid Power and/or Flat Earth.

“Drink deep, or taste not the fanfiction spring”

That image needs a content warning for YouTube Face. Jesus H. Fuck.

Good grief, this brings me back to college.

The NYT also ran this little story about Bloomberg having “to correct at least three dozen A.I.-generated summaries of articles published this year”.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/29/business/media/bloomberg-ai-summaries.html?unlocked_article_code=1.7k4.rrgt.pt3AGFekgpT3

By “better”, he means “more fuckable”.

OK, that’s a night in the drunk tank for you.

Are you, like, posting drunk? Because your comments read like you’re posting drunk.

Bro. What are you doing?

🎶 If I had a Death Note / Ya da shinna shinna shinna shinna gamma gamma game / All day long, I’d namey namey names / If I had my own Death Note 🎶

I can’t be bothered to look up the details (kinda in a fog of sleep deprivation right now to be honest), but I recall HPMOR pissing me off by getting the plot of Death Note wrong. Well, OK, first there was the obnoxious thing of making Death Note into a play that wizards go to see. It was yet another tedious example in Yud’s interminable series of using Nerd Culture™ wink-wink-nudge-nudges as a substitute for world-building. Worse than that, it was immersion-breaking: Yud throws the reader out of the story by prompting them to wonder, “Wait, is Death Note a manga in the Muggle world and a play in the wizarding one? Did Tsugumi Ohba secretly learn of wizard culture and rip off one of their stories?” And then Yud tried to put down Death Note and talk up his own story by saying that L did something illogical that L did not actually do in any version of Death Note that I’d seen.

And now I want potato chips.

Reliance upon “AI” is a fucking disease. Effective treatments are unknown, but theory suggests that repeated tasing in the nads may show potential.

🎶 Goldbugger / the man who will bugger gold / his prick is cold 🎶

Sounds like a perfectly reasonable duck.

The name of the company is actually important information in a news story about a company.

And yes, if you change the headline to one that is confusing, then it becomes confusing.

I love the smell of ban-worthy levels of condescension in the morning.