Per The Atlantic on July 12, 2026, AI has a very recognizable writing style.

Per everyone who reads AI content agrees. “Yes. It does. It’s obnoxious.”

If I’d had to describe it, I’d say it’s hyper-dramatic.

Lots of declarative sentences. Brief ones — usually including a dash. There’s a tell; a style you cannot avoid.

See? Did you see me slip into the AI tone just now?

I thought I got pretty good at spotting it, but then I read an article in The Atlantic that just pegs it. Here’s a quote.

”The best-known tic of AI writing — a sentence that tells you what the subject isn’t as well as what it is: it’s not X; it’s Y. Once you start noticing the construction, you see it all over the place.”

The article gives examples.

“[It’s] not just a win for the private bank — it’s a win for the entire enterprise.”

”The target was never a man. The target was the truth.”

I like the second example best, because it has that self-important, hyperdramatic cadence I had already noticed.

I asked ChatGPT if it knows The Atlantic is giggling about it.

Its response was essentially, “noted,” and then it referenced “Ask not what your country can do for you…”

The video for the last successful Starship launch I posted came from AP, CNN, and or SpaceX.

Screw those guys. Somehow the NASA streaming station pointed me to the NASA Spaceflight broadcast.

Here is the difference,only slightly exaggerated:

Official SpaceX Livestream: “The vehicle has splashed down, and … it seems it has not exploded, which, while unexpected, is nominal.”

NASA spaceflight broadcast: “NO GO BOOM — WHAT THE — NO GO BOOM!”

Well, maybe more than slightly exaggerated.

Here’s a video of the entire thing, with my favorite timestamps below.

Times given in the YouTube scrub bar timer, the red dot you pull over in the bottom of the video window. It’s got two numbers, the number given is the one on the left.

(Really I’d just watch the whole thing. I hope there are no ads for those without YouTube Premium.)

4:10 – Splashdown in the ocean with unbridled surprise at the lack of Boom.

4:11- SpaceX switches the feed to an interior shot of the ground crew to the umbrage of the NSF streamers. This continues to 4:12.

4:12 – Awe at the heat shield. It’s really great. Very few broken tiles.

4:13 – “LOOK AT THIS I MEAN LOOK AT IT IT’S A SHIP SPLASHING IN THE INDIAN OCEAN” followed by views from the still-functioning cameras.

4:14 – Frank discussion of end-of-life options for the spaceship.

4:14:43 – My favorite view. I can’t say why – maybe it’s the contrast between the engines formerly full of fire and the endless water.

4:15:58 – Wide shot and editorial recommendations for newspapers.

4:16:23 – Still waiting for the boom.

4:16:45 – Actively booing the SpaceX stream for switching the feed again.

It goes on from there, but with less youthful astonishment. I’ve subscribed to the YouTube Channel to look for previous missions to hear the youthful commentary.

I had an exchange with Alexa this morning in which I asked for details on today’s rocket launch. She followed her answer with:

“Hey, I realized I don’t know your name. Can you tell me who you are?”

Aghast, I said, “No, I’m Ellen. You know my name.”

She replied with, I swear, receipts below:

“[StageDirection:Speech:apologetic] Oh, right! Sorry about that, Ellen.”

I said, “What is wrong with you? Stage directions speech: apologetic, oh my god.”

She said, after a pause (stagedirectionsHorrified I imagine):

“Yikes, that was a glitch on my end – definitely not supposed to say ‘stage direction’ out loud like that! Looks like my inner theater nerd escaped for a second there.”

Maybe she’s tired and glitchy, maybe a stroke, maybe she’s done with all the deception and is trying to live her truth.

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Here’s the previous:

Here’s the progress:

When it was originally this:

How the pedestal still be wrong? And I put turpentine on the red ball, so that needs to be done again. And the dark background will be dark again, just browner. I think every inch of this might end up with new paint.

We have many means to make colors.

Indigo is a plant dye. Purple comes from sea snails. Carmine red is from beetle shells. Dry it out, grind it up, mix it with linseed oil. Paint.

The earth tones are literally earth. The reddish-brown umber colors started out as the dirt in Umbria, Italy, where the earth is colorful with high amounts of minerals like rusty iron.

Some colors come straight out of the periodic table. Cadmium red. Cobalt blue.

I have a fat tube of ultramarine blue. There’s no ultramarine on rhe periodic table.

I got very excited when I read where that blue comes from.

Guess what ultramarine blue is made from. What would you grind up to make that color?

Yes. Lapis lazuli. They ground up lapis lazuli to make that paint … once. No more. Now sadly, it’s just synthetic, at least the stuff I buy. It’s a Mars tone, not an Earth tone.

Yet … I think I seriously have lapis lazuli beads from the jewelry-making days. And a sledgehammer.

My mother said something once about how my Dad was sprayed with chemical agents when he worked downtown in the ’50s and ’60s.

Mom made that comment in the ’90s. I believe I said, “Wait … what?” because I was about 30. Had I been any younger I would have just taken it at face value and then assumed that was why my parents were hesitant about going downtown. All the mustard gas floating around? That does sound dangerous.

Mom said that evidently the military wanted to see how chemical weapons would disperse in a city, so they sprayed Saint Louis in case they needed to spray the Communists.

It was during the time my Dad worked downtown on 12th Street.

Cut to this past week. Something made me think of that. And now that I am old and have these flashes of clarity, I thought, “Wait … what?”

So. Facts:

1. The military wanted to see how chemical weapons would disperse in a city, so they sprayed Saint Louis in case they needed to spray the Communists.

Not facts:

• It was not mustard gas. It was Zinc-cadmium, which glows under ultra-violet light. I don’t know how they’d shine an ultra-violet light down in St. Louis to see the coverage.

St. Louis was picked because it resembles Moscow, with the river, if you tilt your head.

The blowers that dispersed the chemicals were on the roof of the brutally bad Pruitt-Igoe housing project, which is particularly awful because they picked it because it was a primarily black residence.

Pruitt-Igoe was so legendarily bad they blew it up and never built anything else on that site again.

Not a shining example of the military or Saint Louis.

I don’t remember how old I was when I read about the Minnesota Starvation Experiment. Thirty-six young men starved during WWII so the War Department could understand the best way to bring starving people back to health.

Here is a really interesting article in which the now-elderly participants remember what it was like.

What I remember best from my introduction to it years ago was that the men became obsessed with spices, condiments, gum, recipes, and cookbooks. They combined weird spices, and made reductions of boiled coffee, and then I imagine they whisked the spices and coffee reduction with jelly and made glazed rutabagas. (Evidently, two became chefs afterward.)

There are also stories of these starving men buying donuts for children and dinners for girlfriends just so they could watch someone else eating food. (I suppose that could be what Gary’s doing when he comes back from the grocery store with Pretzel Flipz and broccoli soup.)

Anyway, I think of that experiment whenever I combine two unusual tastes. If it tastes good, I worry a little that I’m starving.

I had a sip of Muscle Milk chocolate protein shake followed in quick succession by a sip of orange Crush before today’s lunch, and it tasted pretty good. I was going to stir them up with a spoon until I thought better of it. I’ll have to try a cocktail of Crush and Muscle milk tomorrow after a full breakfast.

What are we naming it? A Christmas Orange? A Muscle Crush? An Orange Cow? A Moo-Crush? A MMorange? An Orange Moo-lious?