Whenever I have Claude do something for me, I feel nothing about the results. It feels like something happens around me, not through me. That's the new level of abstraction: you stop writing code and start describing intent. You stop crafting and start delegating. I've been doing this professionally long enough to have an opinion, and I don't like what it's doing to me.

All of it focuses on getting things done rather than on quality or craft. I'm more productive than I've ever been. I ship more. I finish more. Each thing lands with the emotional weight of a form letter.

Cadey

"The emotional weight of a form letter." Yeah, that tracks.

When I write, I try to make people feel something. My goal is to provoke emotion when you read me. Generative AI sands down the hard things. Everything becomes homogenous, converging toward the average. The average makes nobody feel anything.

Sure, you can still make people feel things using this flow. I've done it recently. But we're trading away the texture. The rough edges, the weird phrasing, the choices too specific and too human for a statistical model to generate.

I'm going to keep talking to you as an equal. It's the most effective part of my style: I write like I'm sitting across from you, not lecturing down at you. Generative AI defaults to the authoritative explainer voice — the one that sounds like every other. Resisting that pull now takes conscious effort.

Aoi

So the tools are making it harder to sound like yourself?

Cadey

Not harder exactly. More like... the path of least resistance leads to sounding like everyone else. You have to actively choose to be yourself now.

People I know are trying to break into this industry as juniors, and I honestly have no idea how to help them. This industry has historically valued quality and craft, yet somebody can yolo something out with Cursor and get hired by Facebook for it. The signal for "this person knows what they're doing" grows noisier every day.

This part of the industry runs on doublethink. Nuance and opinions that don't fit into tweets. Senior engineers say "AI is just a tool" while their companies lay off the juniors who would've learned to use that tool responsibly. Leadership says "we value craft" while setting deadlines that make craft impossible without the machine. Nobody lies exactly, but nobody tells the whole truth either.

Using these tools at this level of abstraction costs us something essential. I use them every day and I'm telling you: the default output has no soul. It's correct. It's competent. It's fine. And "fine" is the enemy of everything I care about as a writer and an engineer.

Numa

"Fine" is the ceiling that gets installed when you stop paying attention to the floor.

I'm using these tools deliberately to find where the bar actually is. I want to see what's possible at this level of abstraction. Seeing what's possible requires expensive tools and uncomfortable honesty about what they can't do.

The voice is non-negotiable. The weird, specific, occasionally self-indulgent voice that makes my writing mine. If higher abstraction means sounding like everyone else, I'll take the lower abstraction and the extra hours. Every time.

“The Pentagon announced that Fort Moore, formerly named Fort Benning for a Confederate general, will again be named Fort Benning, although it will now honor a different Benning.” – CBS News

It is with immense pleasure that I, King Éomer of Rohan, announce that Helm’s Deep and its fortress shall today revert to the original name of Sauron’s Deep.

No, my loyal servants, not that Sauron.

Rest assured that our beloved stronghold is not named after the evil dark lord hell-bent on destroying Middle-earth, but after a beloved Elven soldier named Elduin Sauron from the Battle of Mirkwood, or something.

This brave warrior, whose name we definitely didn’t spend hours looking for in various scrolls until we found one that matched, sacrificed his life and fought honorably against the forces of Dol Guldur. With this official renaming, we will now be able to celebrate the illustrious military career of the mighty Sauron (again, not that one) in all his glory.

I am well aware of the backlash this memorandum has incurred. Let me be clear once more that the purpose of this is not to offend but to keep alive the memory of the great and powerful Sauron. Elduin Sauron, that is.

Of course, I could’ve chosen the name of a war hero that wasn’t exactly the same as a murderous necromancer. However, that would have stripped Elvin, or whatever I said before, of the chance to have his legacy immortalized in Elven lore. As virtuous citizens of Rohan, I hope you will concur with the preservation of this great man’s story.

Earlier this month, I also changed the name of our fortress, the Hornburg, to the Fortress of Witch-king of Angmar.

Now, before you jump to any conclusions, allow me to explain. Despite its association with the deadly leader of the Nazgûl, many of you may be unaware that the “Witch-king of Angmar” was once the nickname given to Pippin Took by his dear mother. For this reason, I have decided to dedicate this fortress to Pippin—known as the Witch-king to his friends and relatives—for his efforts in the Battle of the Black Gate.

As one of its leaders, I believe it is my duty to commemorate the great people of Middle-earth, no matter how similar their names are to the dark powers that attempted to enslave thousands of innocent men and women. So I vow to you, the people of Rohan, that I shall do my utmost to continue this great tradition for many glorious years to come.

Or, you know, as long as I can find names that match.

Bioware released a statement yesterday. It talked of "turning towards the future". It dreamed of "a more agile, focused studio". Nowhere in the post did the word "layoffs" appear. But this is what the post was actually about. The closest it got to addressing the facts of what happened to an unspecified number of workers is the phrase: "we don’t require support from the full studio."

It's one of the most disingenuous announcements of job cuts in a recent and plentiful history of job cuts. A weirdly impressive feat from BioWare, considering the last two or three years have seen some spectacular verbal gymnastics from games companies when it comes to shitcanning people. Let's take a look at some of our "favourite" mealy-mouthed press releases in which people have their jobs poetically "sunsetted" rather than, say, dropkicked out the window.

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VeriMark. Welcome to Us. This is our website. Here you will come to find who we are. Because you’ve seen our name. Somewhere.

VeriMark. A trusted name. Because it’s so ambiguous and strong, you won’t question it. You’ve got your veri, and you’ve got your mark. As in, we very much hit the mark. Exactly where that is? That’s up to you to find out.

See that background image of the guy climbing a cliff free solo? That’s the American spirit right there. That’s VeriMark. Do we sell mountaineering gear or something? No, you didn’t come to us for that. Besides, that’s way too niche for us. We’re clearly a huge company. And seriously, look at the guy. He’s climbing with his bare hands. That’s not much gear on him. That wouldn’t be a good ad for a climbing gear store, now, would it? Come on, now, think.

Be like that climber. Achieve your dreams all on your own. But with VeriMark behind you.

See, our logo is sort of a hot-air balloon, but not. It could just be a teardrop upside down. Maybe we do something with oil? But again, think of us as more than that. You’re being too specific.

Our Mission:

• To be a positive force for our people, your people, and the global community.
• To relentlessly implement our initiatives, delivering excellence to every corner, exceeding our goals on a daily basis, remaining true to our commitment, our strategy, and our core values.
• To enable a relationship of continuous transparency.

And now on to the tab labeled WHAT WE BELIEVE. We believe in doing great things and in going great places. Beyond the horizon, specifically the horizon of explicitly describing what we do.

No, wait, you’ve actually been reading our About Us page. A Korean family sitting down for a traditional meal of fish and rice. Family. Tradition. Legacy. Culture. You’re getting warmer. Maybe.

But in case you think we’re a musty old company, we’re actually brand new too. See those entrepreneurs pointing to those solar panels? We’re not saying we install those. But we’re not saying we don’t either. That’s VeriMark for you.

Remember that commercial now? The one with the farmer with his hands in his overalls, standing beside his truck? We have something to do with him. He’s a hard worker, and so are we. Get it? We also have something to do with those kids in Nigeria all raising their hands in a classroom. Vaguely, we might have done something charitable to help make that happen. We’re not claiming we did outright. But you thought it.

Children are the future, and the future is for tomorrow’s dreamers. VeriMark.

And then something about vision and innovation, and somebody sliding a deep-dish pizza off a wood serving paddle into a brick oven. Every ingredient represents one of the countless possible services we actually provide here at VeriMark.

VeriMark. Ongoing for generations. Greek pillars. City traffic. We make the remarkable conventional. We make the possible tangible.

Think Statue of Liberty. Think Grand Canyon. Think WASP family of three barefoot in the grass. In slow motion.

VeriMark. What exactly do we do? We honestly can’t pinpoint it, either, but boy, do we make it look professional.

VeriMark. Leading the way in manufacturing actuators and other components for hydraulic systems since 1973.

All images © Studio Ibbini, shared with permission

Artist Julia Ibbini and computer scientist Stéphane Noyer of the Abu Dhabi-based Studio Ibbini (previously) continue to collaborate on intricately constructed works that fall at the intersection of art and mathematics. The duo creates vessels and flat pieces by layering laser-cut papers into complex structures replete with floral filigree and ornate patterning.

While many of their three-dimensional sculptures appear to twist upward in tight, perfectly aligned rows, the pair incorporates more negative space into their recent pieces, many of which seem to morph from architectural or ornamental motifs into wild, botanical growths. Ibbini tells Colossal that this requires finding a delicate balance between the frail material and the resulting form to maintain the work’s structural integrity. She explains the process:

In the pieces that seem to be fading away, hand-made drawings are turned into computational tree structures and density maps on which graph theory and probabilistic algorithms are applied. Through this, we are able to manipulate the geometry of the work so that it looks almost as though the details are slowly eroding into empty space in the final piece.

Studio Ibbini will show works with Long-Sharp Gallery at Art Miami starting next week and in a group exhibition at Sharjah Art Museum from December 13 to January 21. Keep up with the duo’s latest sculptures on Instagram.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $5 per month. The article Studio Ibbini Juxtaposes Negative Space and Botanical Filigree in New Laser-Cut Paper Works appeared first on Colossal.