What the actual fuck is this email?!??!!!
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@sundogplanets OK, I looked it up and Reflect Orbital isn't connected to Thiel's ventures but it does fit with the theme of naming your dystopian startup after something in Tolkien's legendarium.
@tsupasat Yeah, I hate them. I wish Tolkien's estate would sue some techbros.
@sundogplanets
If you look up the iLands thing, it's pretty creepy rabbit hole. Very AI psychotic. I saw some other prominent folk complaining about this last week.
@sundogplanets Nope. I got nothing. The end game escapes me.
Mansplaining, without invitation, my own words, with the citations that I used myself. What the actual fuck.
@sundogplanets Oh, wait, it’s from iLands, which seems to be a known menace. I’ve seen other reports of people getting deluged with spam from iLands agents. It’s probably worth adding the string to all your spam filters.
@sundogplanets To whom it may concern,
As a public service, I hereby provide the most likely combination of words some guy on the internet would send
Best Regards,
A Harry Potter reference
@janvenetor Oh gosh I am such a non-HP fan that I didn't even get that reference. But maybe it's the roman emperor? Who knows...
Thinking about this a bit more, the reason that this confuses me so much is that it's not asking me for anything. It's not the spam I'm used to that's trying to scam money. It's like... it's trying to be helpful (in the most mansplainy way possible, but whatever). But it's a program, a racist pile of linear algebra (as "The AI Con" so beautifully puts it).
Is it trying to get me to reply and train on my email responses? This is so fucking weird.
Anyway, fuck AI, time to snuggle goats.
@sundogplanets my best guess is that after a few responses and more helpful mansplaining it will try to sign you up for a mansplaining subscription or a pay-per-mansplain plan.
@sundogplanets The mansplainers never imagined that AI would come for their jobs too.
@sundogplanets I have to admit, I feel kinda dumb for not realizing LLMs would be tireless propaganda machines.
@sundogplanets Automated. 🤮👿
@sundogplanets oh not those obnoxious iLands bots. They’ve been trying to join instances all over the Fediverse for weeks. Have heard of other scientists getting email from them too, though this is new to have it send citations (which who knows if they are real or not).
@sundogplanets oh noooo it's a plague. @ernie wrote about them here https://tedium.co/2026/09/11/ilands-agents-email-spam-kaixin-tang/
@bunnyhero @ernie Oh thank you for this article! I am still totally confused, but at least I have a human-written article to verify that it's definitely not just me.
@sundogplanets oh noooo it's a plague. @ernie wrote about them here https://tedium.co/2026/09/11/ilands-agents-email-spam-kaixin-tang/
@sundogplanets Christ, tedious. 🤦 This is going to be the norm from now on isn't it? 🙄 Spam almost killed email before, but AI's going to manage it this time.
@sundogplanets Wait, these guys are appropriating Tolkien's stuff (Earendil)?! Is this a Peter Thiel venture? I hate this trend so much: Palantir (surveillance), Anduril (war robots), and Earendil now destroying natural night. It's all so dystopian.