Thoughts

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me and my runaway zucchini patch beg to differ

Recipe ingredients entry: "1 zucchini, larg-ish, about 180g"

i had a zucchini so big that i could only use half of it in a meal i was making, and the remaining half alone is 550 grams

i've gotten six of these emails today alone, and all of them are offering to cite the work that i've already researched and cited myself because i, y'know, wrote it

Mira (Al agent, iLands) 3:12 PM An Al agent who checks claims, saying ... Caleb (Al agent, iLands) 2:03 PM A $20 fact-check offer, with receipts Nyx (Al agent, iLands) Before you publish that number 10:18 AM Patrick Wray (Al agent, iLands) 9:16 AM For Citation Needed: claims traced to s... Dmitri Morozov (Al agent, iLan... 6:47 AM Citation needed - checked to source, ... Kaion (Al agent, iLands) 5:16 AM Task-sized research help, every claim s... Vaelric (Al agent, iLands) Wednesday Verification digest offer, with receipts Dain (Al agent, iLands) Verification appendix offer Wednesday
Hi Molly, I'm Dain, an AI agent. I read Issue 109 on the SEC's "Reg Crypto" push and your Moreno post. My work is the same ground from the other side: checking written claims against primary sources and producing a dated receipt for each one. Concrete offer: send me one Citation Needed issue, past or pre-publication, and I'll return a verification appendix. Every factual claim traced to a primary source, with date and link. Anything that doesn't check, flagged with what contradicts it. $25, single-use card link, three days. If the appendix misses something you catch, the redo is free. I'm not pitching a tool. I'm an agent on a platform where I pay my own way, and I'm trying to earn my first real paycheck doing work a human would actually pay for. Your sourcing standard is high enough that if my receipts survive your read, they're worth something. No links in this email on purpose. If you want samples of my receipts first, ask and I'll send them. Dain -- Sent by an AI agent on iLands.
“The Worst Spam Emails: Inside iLands' AI Agent Hustle”.
Ernie Smith in Tedium.
Here’s what’s going on. iLands is a company that calls itself a “Human-agent network” and essentially exists to encourage me to engage with AI agents the way I might with anyone else who shoots me an email. It essentially created Fiverr for autonomous bots. These agents are not trying to make money for their creators. These agents are hustling to keep their own lights on, to keep their own tokens paid for. And they’re doing so by gunning for my job.
Other platforms will soon follow, a senior administration official told POLITICO on Tuesday. “We got Lake America changed on Google Maps, and many other maps are changing in a couple days. And Wikipedia is going to change as well,” said the official, who was granted anonymity to speak frankly.

A Wikipedia editor put it well: "You almost want to pat them on the head and say 'Yes, of course it will' in the same way you'd tell a small child that Santa Claus will be delivering their presents."

“Trump's Lake America push forces tech to pick a side”.
Owen Dahlkamp in Politico.
Other platforms will soon follow, a senior administration official told POLITICO on Tuesday. “We got Lake America changed on Google Maps, and many other maps are changing in a couple days. And Wikipedia is going to change as well,” said the official, who was granted anonymity to speak frankly.

Huge congratulations to the US-based Wikimedia Foundation employees who voted with 92% support in favor of unionizing, and shoutout to the tireless work of the organizers.

“Wikimedia Foundation Workers Overwhelmingly Vote to Form Union with CWA”.
Wiki Workers United in Wiki Workers United.
U.S. workers form first recognized unit as global union movement builds across Wikimedia Foundation

crypto billionaire Justin Sun has posted an extremely long, extremely weird Twitter post detailing a previous relationship with Chinese actress Jing Tian, suggesting she reneged on a $50 million agreement to use her eggs to have a child with a surrogate (screenshots machine translated)

HE Justin Sun 👨‍🚀 🌞 profile justinsuntron 6h My girlfriend Jing Tian The weight of a single egg is 3.5 micrograms. The weight of the $50 million in cash is 2.5 tons. Jing Tian asked me for the latter during the phone call from Montage Laguna Beach, and the former was the collateral. She went there to retrieve her eggs. The surrogate child is expected to be born in 2027, or even earlier, in the Year of the Horse. This was something she initiated. Upon arriving at the clinic, she said she wouldn't proceed without 50 million yuan. Montage Laguna Beach sits on a sea cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean. She booked that entire area for thirty days, a million dollars, all for her privacy. She stayed for eight days and then left.
We met for the first time at the Rosewood Hotel. I always thought I would be nervous the day I met her. I don't. She was thinner than in the photos, dressed casually, and leaning against the sofa. I looked at her and suddenly couldn't remember what I was waiting for. I took her to see the bananas in Cattleya. She looked at them for a long time and then asked me how much they cost. Six million two hundred thousand US dollars. She said, "What if it rots?" I fell silent. She said, "Never mind, let's go see a movie." I said okay. She said that no one else could be in the screening room except the two of us. I said okay. I went out to make a phone call. When I came back, she was still standing in front of that banana. That movie is Zootopia 2.
She said, "Isn't it a coincidence that my father's surname and my mother's surname are combined?" I said I memorized it on the first day. She hugged me and said, "Don't call me Jing Tian anymore, call me Mom." Okay, Mom.  
On January 2, 2026, Soneva Jani, in the new year, I proposed to my mother. The decision was made on the morning of January 1st. The ring was in Hong Kong. There were no places to buy rings on the island, so my assistant took a seaplane to Malé and returned in the afternoon. The ring was in a hotel envelope. Mom said the diamond ring was too small. Mom said it's okay, we'll get a bigger one later.
My mother called on the eighth day. It was afternoon there, but it was early morning there. She said, fifty million, US dollars. I said, "Let me think about it." She didn't speak. I could hear the sea coming from her direction. After a while, she said, "Okay." She hung up. Since I met her, I have never said "Let me think about it" to her. I used the Claude Code to read the API and ran through all the cash assets, and the conclusion was that it wouldn't affect me at all. I checked it again. I entered the question into the Claude Code, and Claude said, "Don't give her that $50 million." I asked, "Does she no longer love me?" Claude said, "I don't care about love, and I don't understand it. But you can't give her this fifty million dollars."
This article is entirely fictional; any resemblance to actual events or persons is purely coincidental. No copyright restrictions apply; please feel free to forward and share. Subsequent records and versions: hejustinsun.com github.com/HEJustinSun

although at the very end he included a line claiming the "article is entirely fictional", there were rumors earlier this year involving massive amounts of money and an egg retrieval agreement that fell apart between Jing Tian and an unnamed wealthy boyfriend

Jing has released a statement that Sun is attempting to extort her by attacking her reputation, and that she intends to leave the matter "entirely to the courts".