(Off the topic of autism but) I particularly like Cotillion, where Heyer’s engaging but naive main female character is supported both in her social education and her emotional one by the main male character, who has to step up to the mark in a way he’d never previously had to.

I think with the eye it doesn’t look bad, you have to read it out to yourself. To me that’s an obvious thing to do, maybe not to others? not to this guy anyway. Ultimately I like him and so I feel happy he sent something, I guess for me the warmth of that particular human interaction overshadows AI.

This is the point where I traditionally drop in my thread of my cover version bsky.app/profile/alke...

I didn’t actually feel like the end result was empty of meaning even though I hate AI and would never do this myself - I’d write it myself. There was a lot of detail in it that my colleague had presumably fed in and which would’ve been in anything he’d written himself, for instance.

Well, I would expect to feel like that but actually in this case I was mostly amused that this was such a big sign of ‘you know what, AI has no body’. Someone who wrote it themselves would surely say it to themselves under their breath?!

A colleague wrote an ode to our team and teamwork, to thank us for all the hard work over the past year. Really nice thought, but of course done with CoPilot or whatever. Not too bad on first reading but my goodness it DID NOT SCAN at all. You could not have read it out loud!

sunlight on red dogwood bark, the taste of a good sweet pear

Excellent - very happy for you!

Cripes. I had a posh pasty/roll thing from a local deli yesterday - roasted squash, goat's cheese and spinach I think - paid £4.65 for the privilege which is a relatively expensive lunch option for me even in leafy Oxford.

I believe she is canonically a human girl, I don't know what nationality though

We use Outlook at our work and I’m sure it doesn’t do that for us - must be something specific about the set up you have, somehow?