[bagrow]

Here's a question that I hope is not too off-topic.

Do people find the nano-banana cartoon infographics to be helpful, or distracting? Personally, I'm starting to tire seeing all the little cartoon people and the faux-hand-drawn images.

Wouldn't Tufte call this chartjunk?

[push0ret]

I haven't come around any AI generated imagery in documents / slides that adds any value. It's more the opposite, they stand out like a sore thumb and often even reduce usability since text cannot be copied. Oh and don't get me started on leadership adding random AI generated images to their emails just to show that they use AI.

[linux2647]

> Oh and don't get me started on leadership adding random AI generated images to their emails just to show that they use AI

Feels like generated AI art like this is modern clipart

[GaggiX]

It may be survivorship bias, you only notice the AI ones that are bad.

[pona-a]

The problems are not visual but epistemic. If the author didn't specify enough to produce a useful chart, then it's going to be the diagram equivalent of stock images thrown on a finished presentation by a lazy intern. You can't rejection-sample away this kind of systemic fault.

The simple truth we're about to realize is there is no free lunch: a tool cannot inject more intent into a piece than its author put in. It might smooth out some blemishes or highlight some alternative choices, but it can't transform the input "make me a video game" into something greater than a statistical mix-mash of the concept. And traditional tools of automation give you a much better, more precise interface for intent than natural language, which allows these vagaries.

[spunker540]

Yeah there are almost certainly times when it is gen ai and you just didn’t notice.

[elcapitan]

When I see AI images, I skip them, and most likely, the entire article. They're a better warning sign than the ones hidden in the text.

[SV_BubbleTime]

Yeah, I’ve been considering this. They’re going to start removing em dashes, which currently is a surefire way to detect AI text.

Let’s say lose those and using emojis as bullet points. It’s going to be a lot harder to detect.

[slopinthebag]

I don't actually look for em dashes or emojis as indicators, I can tell just from a few paragraphs if the pacing and flow is AI slop.

[fny]

This is equivalent to "do people find PowerPoint to be helpful or distracting." Sometimes yes, mostly no.

In this case, I'd say helpful because I didn't have to read the article at all to understand what was being communicated.

[matsemann]

I never trust them to actually be correct. Aka they're probably worse than useless.

[randusername]

Tufte is evergreen. Zinsser is another.

> Clutter is the disease of American writing. We are a society strangling in unnecessary words, circular constructions, pompous frills and meaningless jargon.

> Look for the clutter in your writing and prune it ruthlessly. Be grateful for everything you can throw away. Reexamine each sentence you put on paper. Is every word doing new work? Can any thought be expressed with more economy?

On Writing Well (Zinsser)

[freedomben]

Most of the time I find them distracting, and sometimes a huge negative on the article. In this particular article though, they're well done and relevant, and I think they add quite a bit. It's a highly personal opinion kind of thing though for sure.

[SV_BubbleTime]

The first one is actually quite good.

Some of the others, I don’t feel like added value, but I agree that these are some of the best of a practice that I agreed does not add a ton of value typically

[browningstreet]

I think it's fine. As someone who blogged a lot, the instant visual differentiation among articles offered by the art within is actually valuable.

[eitally]

I am a victim of AI-documentation-slop at work, and the result is that I've become far more "Tuftian" in my preferences than ever before. In the past, I was a fan of beautiful design and sometimes liked nice colors and ornaments. Now, though, I've a fan of sparse design and relevant data (not information -- lots of information is useless slop). I want content that's useful and actionable, and the majority of the documents many of my peers create using Claude, Gemini or ChatGPT are fluffy broadsheets of irrelevant filler, rarely containing insights and calls-to-action.

So yes, it's chartjunk.

[btucker]

It's not necessarily an AI-generated infographics issue, it's that these aren't good infographics. The graphic part is adding minimal value.

[ramon156]

LinkedIn loves these, even if they're broken.

But they had already lost me at all the links, and the fact there's not a red wire through the entire article.

The first thing my eyes skimmed was:

> CLAUDE.md: Claude’s instruction manual

> This is the most important file in the entire system. When you start a Claude Code session, the first thing it reads is CLAUDE.md. It loads it straight into the system prompt and keeps it in mind for the entire conversation.

No it's not. Claude does not read this until it is relevant. And if it does, it's not SOT. So no, it's argumentatively not the most important file.

[SV_BubbleTime]

Maybe. But I kind of view LinkedIn as a social network for people who only by the grace of a couple better decisions are talking about real business and not multilevel marketing schemes… but otherwise use the same themes and terminologies.

Like mostly people who have confused luck and success, or business acumen for religion.

So I wouldn’t use LinkedIn as a positive data point of what’s hot.

[frotaur]

Are you certain? My understanding was that this is automatically injected in the context, and in my experience that's how it worked. I never see 'ReadFile(claude.md)', and yet claude is aware of some conventions I put in there.

[hbarka]

They’re mistaken. CLAUDE.md is always loaded into context, along with system prompts and memory files.

https://code.claude.com/docs/en/memory

“CLAUDE.md files are loaded into the context window at the start of every session”

[simonw]

My eye has started skipping past them, even though they're often quite useful if you engage with them.

I think the problem is that they're uninformative slop often enough that I've subconsciously determined they aren't worth risking attention time on.

[heliumtera]

No. It adds nothing so nothing is preferred