That's one of the best blog posts I've read in a while. It nails the idea of "write one line that makes the reader want to read the next". It's humorous but also serious. There's no fluff. Instant subscribe.
It's like the opposite of clickbait. The author did, upon information and belief, taste Honda's spicy rodent-repelling tape, and made a strong case that she will in fact do it again unless someone stops her. Truly giving the people what they want.
If yiu have any real examples of llm written text that's as fun to read as that, I'd be curious to see them. Most llm text I see is vapid and uninspired. Kinda exactly the mediocre writing you'd expect from a machine designed to create statistically average sentences based on all the writing its creators could steal.
LLMs write bland LinkedIn "thinkpieces", not Douglas Adams style creative wordplay.
I don't believe anybody should care. If AI made it better, why should I care that they used AI? Either way, I doubt this was AI-assisted - I absolutely love this style.
Damn I could have gotten the "no fluff" version by looking at wikipedia or just googling.
Why do people expect their non-fiction reading to be entertaining? That's not the point and I inherently don't trust your judgement if that's what you're looking for. At some point you've got to provide insight.
Wikipedia won't inform me about the social media and email dynamics at a car manufacturer. Just the email response alone was entertaining and informative: self-aware humor-encrusted legalese that is very human. I can appreciate it for what it is: great PR work from a professional. Wikipedia is pretty humorless, it probably wouldn't even acknowledge the subtext.
"Informative" and "entertaining" are both valid goals for non-fiction writing (and, indeed, fiction writing, if you squint enough to recognize that it can convey "information about how people think/feel/act"). Arguably, the ideal would be to achieve both; but, achieving either is perfectly fine.
Most non-fiction aims to inform, and most fiction aims to entertain, but either can do either.
There isn't that much to know about this tape. It's just a spicy tape, and it's probably not very toxic. "The point" here is the story - the tweets and emails, the thought process.
I really liked it, and clearly a lot of people here liked it too! You're free to dislike it, but that doesn't make it pointless. There's more to humanity than pure, unadulterated facts (however important and interesting they really are!)
It's entertaining when reading is entertaining. This was a great "read while eating lunch at work" read because it was entertaining.
I didn't really care too much about rodent-repelling tape before reading and don't care much now. It was the entertaining writing that brought value for me.
But would you have thought to research how a specific car manufacturer's spicy anti-rodent tape tasted in the first place?
There's an element of discovery in this article, as well as being entertaining and informative. Her writing is—subjectively and objectively—uncommonly good.
This is one of those times where "I bet you're fun at parties" is a perfectly justified response to the (G?)GP [1]. This story is funny, well-written, succinct. Liz would be a hit at parties. GP would not be invited again.
[1] do we prepend great- when referring to parent comments more than two levels (GP) up? Or do we just say GP and rely on context?
