Tessera

@joffre.bsky.social

This actually looks like good old fashioned artisanal plagiarism, not least because the August 2025 Guardian review wouldn't have been in LLM training corpuses in time for the Jan 2026 NYT review. It's interesting that the NYT writer thinks he can partially deflect blame by implicating AI, though!

Guardian review
But the novel is also rich in smaller characters, from the lazy Machiavellian Stefano to hardworking Vittorio, whose otherworldly twin brother Emmanuele is prone to speaking in tongues and dressing up in ragtag begged-and-borrowed uniforms[…].

Because this is most significantly a song of love to a country of contradictions, battered, war-torn, divided, misguided and miraculous: an Italy where life is costume and the performance of art, and where circuses spring up on wasteland.
The Italy that produced both Mussolini and Fellini, fascists and futurists and communists; where “beauty is always imperilled” and “genius grows like a weed”.

NYT review

The novel is also rich in secondary characters, from the lazy, Machiavellian Stefano to Mimo’s childhood friend and fellow craftsman Vittorio and Vittorio’s otherworldly twin, Emanuele, who speaks in tongues and dresses in scavenged uniforms.

Together they populate what is ultimately a love song to a country of contradictions: battered, divided, misguided and miraculous. This is an Italy where life is performance, where circuses rise on wasteland, where beauty is perpetually imperiled and genius proliferates unchecked.

Jeff VanderMeer@jeffvandermeer.bsky.social · 6mo ago

Jaysus Effin' Christ. I hope this leads to a better policy of scrutiny. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/06/b...

Editors’ Note: March 30, 2026:

A reader recently alerted The Times that this review included language and details similar to those in a review of the same book published in The Guardian. We spoke to the author of this piece, a freelancer reviewer, who told us he used an A.I. tool that incorporated material from the Guardian review into his draft, which he failed to identify and remove. His reliance on A.I. and his use of unattributed work by another writer are a clear violation of The Times’s standards. The reviewer said he had not used A.I. in his previous reviews for The Times, and we have found no issues in those pieces. The Guardian review of “Watching Over Her” can be read here.

@joffre.bsky.social · last yr.

Unlikely to be him - someone named Tyler Robinson owned the house listed on the FEC form from 2019-2021, when our Tyler Robinson would have been 16-18.

FEC form showing Trump donation by Tyler Robinson at 83 N Lee Ln, St George, UT.

Homes.com screenshot showing 83 N Lee Ln was owned by Tyler and Makayla Robinson from Jul 2019-Jan 2021.

Adam Cochran@adamscochran.bsky.social · last yr.

8/10 Tyler himself was a registered republican and previously donated $224.48 to Trump campaigns.

@joffre.bsky.social · 2y ago

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 2y ago

Kevin Hassett suggests Canadian authorities are covering up major fentanyl operations: "I can tell you that in the situation room I've seen photographs of fentanyl labs in Canada that the law enforcement folks were leaving alone. Canada's got a big drug problem."