HUMAN INTELLIGENCE
How to Keep Track of Writers You Want to Stalk/Read on Medium
When Human Intelligence (HI) is preferable to Alternative Insanity (AI)
Sorry gang, this “quick and dirty” intention grew. You’re welcome to save the screenprints and use them, or link to this. “The typist Patricia Jeanne” is focused on other stuff.
The majority caucus taking up too much space in my brain — Patricia Jeanne — gave birth to me when she thought her SERIOUS, “intelligent”, subscribers would get sick of the silliness I pop (poop?) out every so often.
She calls my brand of humor snarlcasm. Be forewarned, I’m kind of like Dark Patricia Jeanne, only more playful. And way funnier.
She could write this, but she’s being stubbornly “professional” and needs a break. I’m the clever one who thinks rules are made to be twisted, tangled, and taken out for a spin before setting them on fire and dumping their ashes into a can of toxic waste. I’m not done yet. Then those regulations, advisories, and directions should be buried at sea by drunk pirates.
So expect tags — lots of them!
Human Intelligence (HI) vs Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Writing this was inspired by Victoria Kjos. There’s a lot of Victorias! You know, you can put “The Best” before your name. Or, get creative. Vickoranimus is available. So is Vickonobility_the_Wise_One. It makes finding you easier in tags. Patricia Jeanne used to charge by the quarter hour for technical consulting, so she’s programmed to notice extra steps. Me too, just in a different specialty.
Pay attention — editors say I “open too many doors,” but I prefer to think of them as off-ramps begging to be taken. I get where I’m going, eventually.
Human Intelligence (HI) versus Automatic Ineptness (AI)
Victoria and a gang of renegades promote authentic, thinking, feeling writers rather than the bot farms copying and pasting recycled ChatGPT or other Assinine Insidiousness (AI) drivel.
Pyramid schemes of bot farmers are gaming the system and like diseased birds, are vomiting recycled content into their youngsters who are too afraid to spread their wings. They poop on the rest of us, and other birds pick up that poop and feed it to their developmentally-challenged spoiled kids.
Except the birds come as locusts, and the users are clogging up Google searches and stealing attention from those who deserve it — ME!!!
The recycled vomit is then used in Alternative unIntelligence (AI) Factland, drowning legitimate expertise and first-hand accounts of events.
Maintaining lists of writers you’d like to ̶d̶a̶t̶e̶ follow
Warning: I’m subversive, so I’m going to tag more than three people. The problem is I won’t give credit to all those who deserve it.
Patricia Jeanne and I share some common interests, but she’s got a long list of (yawn) serious writers, technologists, political and news junkies, educators, scientists, creative writers, satirists, poets, and other slimeballs.
I’ve got the good list. The writers might be slightly deranged, but they’re interesting and talented. Think Pablo Picasso, Salvadore Dali, and MC Escher writing a story and illustrating it, on mescaline.
Sometimes our lists overlap. Patricia Jeanne says if you’re a rebel who doesn’t believe in ̶b̶i̶t̶c̶h̶e̶s̶ niches and writes in more than one style, another profile pays off. She’s more creative, playful, and confident over here than behind the serious wall. Sometimes her tedious mind kicks in to edit, but (sorry!) not very often. On Notion, she’s all business.
Tagging Writers
Victoria the Amazing tagged a whole bunch of writers so others might find humans (ick!) who over-exercise their teensy brains demanding creative ideas, thoughtful opinions, and great stories.
¡Ay Caramba! People should only obey the brain stem. Eat, sleep. breathe, procreate, and eliminate waste and adversaries.
And listen to Laurie Anderson, Björk, Throbbing Gristle, and Taylor Swift.
Creating language was a mistake — a good glare works wonders. Usin language to write burns up brain cells that turn into skunk bunnies and multiply like cancer. Don’t think so much — it’s like drowning your grass. Your corpus callosum will shrivel and turn a sickly shade of green before it starts oozing…
Patricia Jeanne claims I’m lying. She says using your brain helps you grow as a human (yuck), develops your talents (gross!), and benefits yourself and those you interact with. Gag! Puke! Grab the pitchfork!
She has no idea what her innards look like. She also says I talk too much and need to focus. Fine. Get ready to be bored.
Last word about tagging — Medium hopes to operate with paid membership and authentic growth. As writers, we can’t expect to control who will see our words or how they’ll be used. (dammit.) If we try to control our audience too tightly and those we read, we’ll miss out on opportunities to discover interesting new writers.
When bots generate content — often plagiarized or AI — they frequently use a program to tag random profiles. This is often what gets their accounts suspended. I’m curious when tagged, but know writers who react with “Now what? Go away.” and won’t look. So, tag judiciously. Or I’ll bite.
If you’re sick of being behind a tag wall, visit the story you were tagged in, press
[Patricia Jeanne here. Sorry about Lizzie Lizard Brain. I tried taking half of her anti-psychotic medicine, but it didn’t work. Instructions are legit.]
Navigating between profiles
The real Patricia absolutely hates having her picture taken, so there aren’t many. Her art represents her. Bright, dark, complex, and simple. She’s weird, very hard to define. Ageless, baseless, and brainless.
Bard AI says her image is a dragon eating something. ChatGPT says it’s a flower painted on a blue background. Not surprisingly, both are wrong. They’re also wrong about who she is and what she’s written. But that’s another story.
The nice thing about original artwork is it can’t be plagiarized without stealth being easily detected using Google Lens or InVid.
Maintaining multiple profiles
I’m sure future generations will view me as Mark Twain, and Patricia Jeanne as Samuel Clemons. (Who? My point exactly.)
By the way, Medium’s not perfect. Surprise!
If you maintain more than one profile, you have to log out of one to get to the other. If you’re reading different stories under each profile, you’ll have to either read it twice — you’re welcome, or log into the original account where you first read the piece you liked. Plus, you can read your own stuff. Patricia Jeanne reads me when she doesn’t feel funny to get inspired, or when she does think she’s funny and needs a comeuppance.
You can quickly find stories you’ve recently read under the “Reading History” tab, under your Library — accessible under your profile.
Access your other profile to reference its stories or see how something new is performing. Example: I search for Patricia Jeanne using the magnifying glass. Under ‘People’, I click on her profile and select whatever story I’m interested in. This way, I can see the claps and comments and give her crap. Our dueling intellects are often funnier than the satire.
I logged out of Lizzie Lizard Brain and into Patricia Jeanne to access history to get Victoria’s story and profile name to link to. At first, this seemed cumbersome, but it took 4 clicks. Kind of like turning your head to the left.
Maintaining lists of profiles to follow
Option 1: Create Medium Lists
If you find a story you like, click on the funny-looking 14th-century English flag icon that appears at both the top and bottom of the story.
It’s the one before the ‘play sound’ button.
Click on “Create List” and save the story to “Writers I follow,” “Read Later,” or “Stuff to hide from Mom.” Once you’ve created a list, you can select and add to it. The list can be private or public with a checked box.
If you don’t want to create a list, Medium’s default is to save stories to “Reading list.”
Access your lists by selecting your profile image and choosing “Library.”
My profile has only been active for a couple of months, so I’m still able to scan the list of people under “Following,” but it spreads like leaping lizard herpes each time I like someone.
After identifying a writer I want to be sure to follow, I save one of their stories under “Writers I follow.” This way, I can click on their profile name and find any recent stories I may have missed.
The wit and wisdom of the people in my “Writers I follow” list are well worth checking out. But, I made the list private, because I’m bad at administration and my talons don’t type. Plus, there are many, many more.
Check out Andrew Rodwin, Gael MacLean, Debdutta Pal, Ann James, Thief, and Smillew Rahcuef. Don't forget Grandma Smillew! Much of my (questionable) humor ends up published on MuddyUm. Patricia Jeanne’s, and many other brilliant half-wits, as well. We’ve also discovered Miss Catherine La Grange, spinster can be funny as well as informative. Give her work a peek.
Srini and Allen Ishak are responsible for inspiring me on this voyage, but can’t be held responsible. Still, they showed the way and should be checked, as in fouled by the Pistons. (kidding!)
Patricia Jeanne says she’ll stomp on my neck (harder) if I don’t add Raine Lore and Jaylee Reign. They run The RvR publication and are delightful.
I’m partial to Ryan Klemek and Thief’s artistry and sensibilities. Patricia Jeanne says hanging out at Ryan’s Short and Weird publication, or Smillew’s Dead or Alive makes me manic and too creative. Both Ryan and Thief show great skills in creating beautiful images and commanding language to showcase their incredible range.
Patricia Jeanne has been harassing Jaylee Reign over her great GIFs. That’ll probably be her next lame tech trick/time suck. (sigh.) I sneeze or scream every time she tries to snip images of my talons! 🤣
Creating the lists may take a bit of time, but it’s worth it. Since you’re on Medium anyway, you don’t have to search for scraps of paper (I eat them) or other reminders.
Update 12/30/23 — Sharing lists
My idiot typist rarely edits after the fact. She’s tempted, so I try to give her new ideas quickly. But. She asked, “Did you mention users can save lists to their lists?” Dammit.
If you want to, you can save others’ lists in your own profile. A list is just another data item similar to a story or comment.
You can visit your favorite author’s profile and save see their public lists under your own profile.
They show up under your “Saved Lists” in your Library.
Feeling a little stalkery now, suddenly wanting celery.
This method can be used to create your own elite kingdom, like a company org chart, or school clique.
Further (short) instructions appear here —
Option 2 Create an unlisted story
Patricia Jeanne does this when she’s pitching a story or collaborating with someone. Me too, for leading mutant lizard rebellions.
It’s less public than Twitter, feels faster than email, and saves you the trouble of going to Slack — that’s so hard. [Bonus tip: You can have more than one desktop active if you’ve got too many tabs open.]
An unlisted story is the same as a regular story but isn’t listed for all to see. Tagged profile names will get the usual notification — ie, “Lizzie Lizard Brain mentioned you in her story “I’m Awesome!’” However, searching for the story “I’m Awesome!” won’t direct those not tagged to the unlisted item.
For example, I could publish this story as unlisted by accessing the 3 dots in the upper-right-hand corner of the Medium editor —
Unlisted issues
I mentioned Medium isn’t perfect.
There are some issues with this method to be aware of.
Those who are tagged can clap and respond, but the author and those who respond cannot read those comments.
So, if Allen Ishak leaves a comment like, “Who the hell is Lizzie Lizard Brain?” I wouldn’t see it, and neither would Raine, who would undoubtedly leave a lovely comment.
Those who are tagged could leave private messages on the piece, and they’d be visible to everyone tagged.
So, Victoria Kjos or R C Hammond could copy everyone tagged in her piece, paste them into a new document, and publish the story as an unlisted item. Then everyone tagged would have access and leave private notes saying “Lizzie Lizard Brain is AWESOME, but Patricia Jeanne’s an ass.”
She could also use the ‘snip’ tool, and/or save it as an image and paste it into the document.
Unlisted stories aren’t eligible for the Medium Partner Program (MPP) so won’t earn money from reads.
BTW — note to the guys who hit on me in private notes: My typist says I’m a manifestation of a complex mind that’s not interested. She’s no fun.
Options 3, 4, and more — Digital, but off Medium
My typist keeps Notion, Microsoft’s Notepad, and colorful Sticky Notes pinned to her taskbar at the bottom. You can copy and paste profile names in one of those, but will lose the links. Likewise, you could use your cellphone or tablet to keep track. Same with maintaining a list in a pinned email, Word, Google Docs, or any other editor you like. She thinks multi-tasking means multi-talented, and bores me to green, slimy tears.
She uses Notion occasionally, saying it’s like visiting another land where her Medium profiles don’t live. Notes and ideas there have different lives that sometimes make it home, or are left behind like poopy sandals.
In real life, our attention span is short. If you comment on and highlight our work, we remember we love you. When you highlight, we can quickly click on your profile and see if you’ve written anything lately. A visible reminder is like a hot cattle prod. But highlighting “And I said,” before the good stuff makes me turn a sickly shade of human.
The snipping tool, Microsoft Sticky Notes, and Notepad are all available for free through your Microsoft Windows Accessories. Microsoft plugins and Google Extensions have similar tools, including Notion. The nice thing about Notion is the colored text. Good for categorizing the typist’s stream-of-consciousness thoughts if she ever decides to add structure.
Writing about AI
If you’re inclined to write about issues surrounding AI, my typist wrote several pieces before her AI hangover. It’s kind of like the hangover you get from writing about Medium, but not as bad as writing about writing. This piece provides a lot of examples of bad AI responses from Bard and ChatGPT. You’re free to use them.
It also explains some of the issues with AI, the data it’s trained on, and why it’s a problem.
Example: The cybersecurity dweeb who stopped the worst spread of malware ever was wrongly named as the person who wrote and deployed the weapon that disabled systems all over the world. He’s tried to have this corrected in ChatGPT and Bard, but OpenAI and Google say, “Sorry smartypants. We got it from Common Crawl, and others have repeated it, so we’re going to keep gobbling up that data and repeating the same false claims. Ta-ta!”
People who spread false information, their publishers, and the platform can be held liable. Not AI. False, damaging, and out-of-context data (text, voice, videos, images) falls under dis or misinformation, or deepfakes, depending on intent.
Patricia Jeanne started the publication “Ethics and AI” not long after ChatGPT was released. She’d only been dedicated to writing for a couple of months and had no idea how to run or promote a publication, so it mostly held her AI-related posts.
Because she’s lazy, crazy, and before long will be supporting the growth of a daisy, she’s turning over ownership to her friend and able younger AI-knowledgable Aman Dasgupta. However, she’ll probably still put her editorial sticky fingers in the pot.
If anyone submits a piece using AI-generated text, espousing recycled AI ideas — provided by AI, I get to eat the entity who submitted it for lunch.
Versions of AI text detectors CopyLeaks and GPTZero work pretty well and are free as plugins and extensions. OpenAI, Google, and other image generators are adding watermarks and metadata as well.
The publication change announcement addresses AI images, privacy, and recycled errors.
Conclusion
The best part about writing on Medium is the relationships that are formed. That, and finally being able to afford a Walmart bean and cardboard burrito after publishing 42 stories.
Forty-two, because the powers at be in Medium management also read The Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy, and know 42 is the answer to the “Ultimate Question.” The author must have had memory issues. Both he and his story’s characters couldn’t remember the question.
I hope this helps others to maintain those relationships and find the writers they most care to find quickly and easily. The same types of methods can be used on other platforms, such as Twitter and Facebook by making a draft post.
Victoria and others are welcome to link to this story to work out how they might want to share their own lists. Or not. It’s nice and quiet in my corner.
But remember, if you share this in an unlisted story and reference my profile or Patricia Jeanne’s, we’ll get notified. So don’t say, “This crazy woman wrote this stupid thing. We hate her, but she slings data like a four-armed pirate on crack!” Neither of us do crack.
Wait — I could use the extra money from the reads to get a dollop of mystery sauce on my next burrito. Or, try crack.
Victoria wrote her piece in response to ChatGPT and other AI Large Language Model (LLM) systems clogging the feeds.
Before there was Lizzie, Patricia Jeanne wrote a couple of pieces poking fun at these marauding creatures.
Patricia Jeanne is going to slip in some serious AI crap. AI stands for a lot of things, including Auto-Immune disorders (stupid typist collects them!), Artificial Insemination (why? there aren’t enough 100% humans?), and in this case, Arrogant Insanity.
Read my short and twisty stuff instead.
She’s baaack. Patricia Jeanne, that is.
These two get more reads than all of Patricia Jeanne’s other published articles combined. But, they’re mostly external, and she hadn’t been writing for very long when she vomited these. Hold your nose.
My apologies to all the people I’ve inadvertently missed. There are too many talented writers and friends to mention without going deaf from the thunder of the Medium Gods.
Thanks for reading, and as the top cop on Hill Street Blues used to tell his detectives, “Be careful out there!”
See? The typist has been around since before the Internet was a thing, and remembers the dumbest things — just not when to feed me rodents!
