This article was copublished with Truthdig.

Taylor Townsell remembers her OBGYN reassuring her that her IUD insertion would feel like “just a pinch.” The pain came a split second later. The 32-year-old described it to Truthdig in still-vivid detail: “Bright, electric, as if my body had become nothing but nerve endings.” She passed out.

Six years later, in 2023, as the time to get a new IUD inserted came closer and closer, Townsell grew increasingly terrified. For medical reasons, the IUD was the only contraceptive available to her — “though my doctor in Tennessee did suggest abstinence,” she noted. “I felt powerless,” she told Truthdig.

Townsell wanted to understand what had happened to her back in 2017, and figure out whether the pain could be avoided this time around. On Instagram’s #IUDinsertion, she came across patient testimonies just like hers. Some even filmed themselves during the procedure: crying, vomiting, fainting, bleeding through paper gowns.

Townsell learned that the source of her pain was not her IUD itself but the instrument used to insert it: the tenaculum forceps. This was her first time hearing about the tenaculum, let alone seeing it. “I sort of understand why they don’t show it to us before using it in us,” she said: “It looks more like a medieval torture device than a gynecological tool.”

Shaped like a pair of metal scissors, the tenaculum’s sharp pointed claws, curved inward, grab onto the cervix to stabilize it and grant easier access into the uterus. “That’s the pinch I’d been so casually warned about,” Townsell realized — though she described it more “like being stapled on the inside.”

A highly effective tool, the tenaculum is still routinely used without anesthesia on 120 million patients a year for IUD insertions, biopsies, hysteroscopies and fertility treatments. It causes mild to severe pain in 90 percent of patients and has remained largely unchanged for over 135 years.

Though Townsell finally knew why she’d felt such pain, she couldn’t seem to find a way around it. Until one day, her online search led her to the website of a medical device company named Aspivix, which claimed to be “reimagining gynecology with ‘gentle’ in mind.”

Townsell read all about Carevix, a suction-based device to alleviate pain during cervical procedures. The tenaculum’s sharp metal claws were replaced with a plastic suction wand, which gently stabilizes the cervix without piercing it, dramatically reducing pain and bleeding during procedures.

“I knew this was what I’d been looking for,” Townsell told Truthdig.

At your cervix

The story of Aspivix begins, improbably enough, with three men.

By the mid-2010s, David Finci, a Swiss OBGYN, had grown increasingly uncomfortable using the tenaculum on his patients during IUD insertions. Ikram Guerd, Aspivix’s general manager and CMO, told Truthdig that Finci often felt “ashamed” of hurting his patients with a tool that had been adapted from a Civil War-era bullet extractor.

Several decades ago, researchers proved that the cervix is actually dense with nerve endings. Though the science has been corrected, the instrument itself hasn’t. The same goes for the cold, metal speculum; tested on enslaved women and still routinely described as the “can opener” by uncomfortable patients, it continues to be sold, taught and used, often alongside Pozzi’s bullet extractor.

In 2015, Finci turned to his brother Julien — a medical device engineer — for help designing an alternative to the tenaculum. They were soon joined by Mathieu Horras, a colleague from the med-tech world. Together, the trio began experimenting.

Carevix’s origins are almost implausibly earnest. Inspired by the vacuum pump used in obstetrical procedures to pull the baby out during difficult deliveries, David Finci knew what he wanted from the start: to use suction rather than claws to grab and hold the cervix without piercing it. “I had no idea what a cervix even looked like,” his brother Julien told Truthdig with a laugh, “so my first prototype was completely upside down, and totally unusable on an actual cervix.” David eventually stepped in, using his kids’ Play-Doh to model a cervix for Julien to work with.

This origin story captures a broader contradiction within gynecology itself — a field historically shaped by men attempting to solve problems they did not physically experience and often did not fully understand. Many of the technologies and procedures governing reproductive care are still designed, financed and approved within overwhelmingly male institutional structures. Aspivix’s founders seem aware of that imbalance, frequently citing Horras’s wife, a midwife, as a “constant source of inspiration” during the device’s early development. 

When the three men finally figured out a design, they quit their jobs to launch Aspivix full-time and develop Carevix — a portmanteau of “care” and “cervix.”

Carevix was tested against the standard cervical tenaculum in a randomized controlled trial involving 100 women undergoing IUD insertion, who were asked to rate their pain levels throughout the process. These trials found that Carevix reduced pain during IUD insertion by up to 73 percent and bleeding by 78 percent, compared to the tenaculum.

Aspivix has since grown into a 14-person team that includes eight women. 

‘Selling ballet shoes to a football team‘

Developing Carevix was one thing. Convincing financiers to confront an instrument many had never heard of and a pain they had never experienced was another entirely.

“Here we were,” Julien Finci told Truthdig, “three men trying to pitch rooms full of male investors a tool meant to alleviate cervical pain: it was like trying to sell ballet shoes to a football team.”

Over the past two decades, studies have repeatedly found that women are more likely to have their symptoms minimized, attributed to anxiety or emotion, and treated later and less aggressively — particularly when the pain is gynecological in origin. 

To bridge the empathy gap in potential investors, Horras began carrying an old tenaculum in his bag. During pitch meetings, he’d pinch their fingers with it, asking them to imagine this same tool being used on their most sensitive bits. “They tend to all close their legs at once,” Guerd said with a laugh.

Growing more serious, Guerd added: “That’s when we would tell them that women have somehow been expected to normalize this exact sensation for centuries, without anesthesia.” Too often investors would still leave the meeting with vague promises to ask their wives or girlfriends about the tenaculum, she said. “There’s still this reflex where anything involving the female anatomy immediately becomes niche,” Guerd told Truthdig.

What Aspivix needed, they soon realized, was a story. The team began telling the story of a fictional young woman named Emma, a young student who accidentally fell pregnant because she was too afraid to have an IUD inserted. Investors, Julien Finci explained, seemed more responsive to the broader social consequences of gynecological pain — unwanted pregnancy, contraception failure, lack of reproductive autonomy — than to the pain itself.

“Protected sex,” he said. “That caught their attention.”

In 2015, Bioceptive, a medical device company based in Louisiana, received Food and Drug Administration clearance for its own cervical suction retractor, which creates a portal through the cervix without needing a tenaculum. Like Aspivix, the company foregrounds their tool’s use in avoiding the undesirable “side effects” of pain and bleeding that “discouraged some women from necessary procedures.” As for pain itself: it, again, takes a back seat.

A no-brainer?

By 2024, Carevix had received FDA clearance and had been named one of TIME Magazine’s best inventions.

“You would think it would be a no-brainer,” Guerd told Truthdig from California, where the company has spent the past two years trying to persuade U.S. hospitals and clinics to abandon the tenaculum. “You present the two instruments side by side and think: ‘Obviously doctors won’t choose the scary-looking scissors.’” But, as it turns out, she said, they often do.

The reason is, in part, inertia. The tenaculum is cheap, reusable and embedded into medical training. Entire workflows are built around it. To replace it requires not only a new device but retraining, new purchasing approvals, reimbursement negotiations and — perhaps hardest of all — convincing doctors to spend more time and money solving a pain many still underestimate.

Over the past two decades, a whole array of FemTech startups have run into similar roadblocks when attempting to redesign the speculum — the dreaded duck-shaped metal tool used to look into the vaginal opening. These new alternatives are made out of plastic, silicone or polyurethane; some are inflatable, others come equipped with LED lights or come with fuzzy comfort socks. But few have actually made it into doctors’ offices. The barriers to entry still feel too high — especially when very few patients actually complain directly to their doctor about the speculum as it is.

Some doctors, Julien Finci told Truthdig, reacted defensively when presented with Carevix, insisting that the tenaculum worked perfectly well for them and that they would never hurt their patients.

“There’s a lot of ego involved,” Guerd added. Aspivix had initially hoped patients themselves would help accelerate adoption by requesting Carevix directly from providers. But that strategy occasionally backfired: “We had one patient who was extremely enthusiastic and brought the tool up to her doctor,” she recalled. The physician didn’t appreciate learning from their own patient that a new alternative existed and refused to use it.

“You often also have to convince doctors that there’s something in it for them,” Julien Finci told Truthdig. With this in mind, Aspivix began emphasizing that less bleeding meant less cleanup, that less fainting meant quicker turnover in examination rooms, that happy patients tended to come back and recommend the practice to their friends.

Insurance, however, has only complicated matters. One of Aspivix’s biggest challenges, Guerd explained, is reimbursement. Insurers remain reluctant to cover “elective” pain-relief in gynecological procedures, which leaves many patients with out-of-pocket costs. 

To navigate that obstacle, Aspivix introduced what it calls a “Letter of Medical Necessity” on its website. Patients can download the document, ask their physician to sign it and submit it to their insurer in hopes of securing reimbursement. “The idea,” Guerd explained, “was to create pressure on insurance companies by showing there is real patient demand for pain management options in gynecological care.”

Patient-centered — and driven

Self doubt remains one of gynecology’s quietest inheritances. Even the language clinicians use during procedures performs a kind of anticipatory minimization: Patients are told to expect “pressure,” “mild discomfort” or “a small pinch.” 

Growing distrust in the medical establishment left many patients fearful and anxious. Over time, thanks to social media, many realized that their pain was not mysterious nor personal but, rather, systemic. POVs of painful IUD insertions were followed by multiple videos of Black women in labor writhing in pain in hospitals as they were ignored.

In the past few years, Aspivix came to rely on this growing resistance in order to create momentum. One of the company’s earliest American adopters, Natalie Paul, a nurse practitioner and founder of Lavender Spectrum Health in Portland, Oregon, posted a Carevix demonstration on TikTok. The video quickly went viral, and patients began flooding in.

“Before adopting Carevix,” Paul told Truthdig, “I had nearly stopped offering IUD insertions altogether. I hated doing it. I hated hurting people.” But when Carevix became available in the United States, Paul, whose practice focuses heavily on trauma-informed care, immediately ordered a dozen devices. Much of the response to the video, both online and in the clinic, Paul said, was less about technological fascination than relief at seeing a provider publicly acknowledge that gynecological pain mattered.

Aspivix began rolling out Carevix territory by territory, focusing on smaller regional networks before attempting national expansion. Guerd compared the strategy to “political campaigning”: train enough doctors in one area, generate enough patient demand, then gradually widen the circle.  “The goal,” she explained, “is for a patient to be able to show up and ask about Carevix, “and the doctor already knows it, already trusts it, already knows how to use it.”

Carevix is now offered by some 50 providers across the United States.

The shift opened by patients has begun rippling into medicine itself. In 2024, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated its recommendations around pain management during IUD insertion, acknowledging that pain is often underestimated and poorly managed. The following year, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists issued new guidance emphasizing patient-centered gynecological care.

One-size fits all?

Of course, the device itself isn’t a panacea, and some parts of it could still use improvement, doctors say. But its limitations themselves expose a deeper problem: Efforts to make gynecology gentler are necessarily complicated by centuries of disregard for gynecological care. Though well-informed (and well-insured) patients can pick from an array of pain management options (ranging from ibuprofen or anti-anxiety medication to general anesthesia), none of these address the root cause of said pain.

Alissa Conklin, an assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Indiana University, ran the first U.S. pilot study on Carevix. “I volunteered,” she told Truthdig, “because no one’s invented anything new to hold onto the cervix since the 1890s. That sounded amazing. ”

After months of trials, she found that the device significantly reduces pain during IUD insertion, but that it has some practical limitations that the tenaculum didn’t. In some cases, she said, if the cervix is too small, if it has any cysts on it, if its shape has changed after pregnancy, Carevix’s current U-shaped suction cup just isn’t the right fit, or could actually end up causing bleeding. Conklin also pointed to the device’s current size and shape — “a long plastic wand with a fat handle” — which doesn’t fit into smaller speculums and can sometimes be difficult to handle when you’re used to the small tenaculum.

“It’s not a perfect replacement. But it also doesn’t poke holes in your patient’s cervix,” she concluded with a dry laugh. “So that’s nice.”

Something several practitioners also pointed out is that the device is currently single-use and significantly more expensive than a reusable metal tenaculum — depending on the size of a provider’s order, they could pay $50, $35 or $25 per device — creating financial strain for clinics with tighter budgets. Recent tariffs on imported goods have further complicated distribution in the United States. “The challenge,” Conklin explained, “is that the places serving the most vulnerable patients are often the least able to absorb additional costs.”

The team at Aspivix told Truthdig that they are working on developing a reusable version of their device, and attempting to adapt its suction cup to a more various set of anatomies.

Even if massively adopted, Carevix would not solve every problem in gynecology. The process of measuring the uterus ahead of an IUD insertion can still hurt regardless of the tool used to hold the cervix. With or without Carevix, women still report severe cramping during and after insertions.

But now, Conklin pointed out, patients have options. “I think we as providers could do a much better job at providing patients with that autonomy,” she said. “Some patients, the younger ones, come here ready for that. They own the body, they own their experience and they are 100 percent going to speak up for themselves. But I try to speak for the people who aren’t yet ready to speak for themselves — older women, Black women, patients whose pain has long been ignored — to let them know: You have that right, you have these options.”

Being heard

When Townsell found Aspivix’s website in her online search for an alternative to the tenaculum, she sent them a panicked email: “I basically wrote: ‘Please, please help me. I don’t know if I can do this again.’” Someone from the company replied almost immediately, and then followed up when she hadn’t answered. She was put in touch with physicians at Columbia University Medical Center, one of the first sites in the United States offering Carevix.

At the time, Townsell lived in Philadelphia. During her trip to New York, she braced herself for another traumatic ordeal. Accompanied by a supervising physician, a trainee, a patient advocate and her boyfriend, she underwent the procedure using Carevix. “I kept waiting for the horrible part,” she said, “and then, suddenly, it was over.”

What stayed with her most, however, was not merely the absence of pain but the atmosphere surrounding the procedure itself. The doctors actually showed her the instrument to be used on her. They treated her fear as rational rather than exaggerated.

“It was the first time I felt like my pain had been anticipated instead of dismissed,” she told Truthdig. “Women have been saying this hurts forever — it feels like we’re just now being heard.”

Last year I went into the woods for a week. It was a tent in a fancy campsite, and every night before bed I could go to a communal area to eat s’mores with people I don’t know. I had been looking forward to this week for a long time. I packed some shorts and shirts, a bonnet, some books for reading and some coloring books, my laptop and notebook, snacks, my skincare and toiletries, and my makeup.

Yes, I did pack makeup, even though I wasn’t planning on interacting with many people at all. I love makeup and I enjoy putting it on. I wear it for me - most of the time.

When I got to the campsite and lugged my things to my tent, I felt a wave of calm wash over me. It was so quiet. My house is full of people, and the city itself is full of noise - cars, electric hums, far away music. But in this tent there was nothing but the chirp of a bird or the buzz of an insect.

My voice was the first to go. Then my face.

I quickly fell into silent routine. I showered, put on an arrangement of the few shirts and shorts I brought, covered myself in lotion and sunscreen, and made myself some coffee and some breakfast. Then I would sit and eat while reading a book. Then I would nap. Then I would write some and walk around the woods. Then I would eat again and read some more. I would color in my coloring book. I would write. I might even take a second nap. Sometimes I would hum to myself just to feel the mechanism of my voice and know that it was working. At night I would make my way to the communal area to eat and talk with other campers. I would try not to freak out about how much bees also wanted s’mores. These little conversations with other campers were usually the first words I had spoken all day. Then, as it got dark, I would make my way back to my tent to watch the stars and sleep.

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In the silence other words were easy. I read two books from cover to cover (with my ADHD becomes increasingly hard as I age). I finished my book proposal and a few essays. I wrote out a creative plan for the next year.

I didn’t put the makeup on once. Mainly because to do so would have made my numerous naps more complicated (I absolutely cannot sleep with makeup on my face if there’s any chance I’ll get makeup on my pillow. If I’m perfectly still on my back I can sometimes get in a quick nap, but it isn’t comfortable and my son says that I look like a corpse when I nap like that). I walked around with moisturizer and sunscreen, rubbing my face with abandon and not worrying about what I had just done to my blush or eyebrows. I had no ideas what facial expressions I was making as I read, what it looked like as I laughed at a joke I found in the pages.

There was no mirror to be found other than a three inch one I brought in my makeup kit. So when I dressed I put on whatever fit the weather and was most clean. And with little fanfare, for the first time since I was about ten years old, my body began to disappear.

I remember when I first had an observable body. When I went from being a kid who ran through life only aware of limbs as they scraped on tree trunks or tried (and failed) to do cartwheels in the grass. A kid whose body size was only discussed in relation to the pants that were already too short or the new jacket that was needed for a new season to a girl with a body. A body that was growing and changing, and not in a good way.

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My body stopped being the thing that carried me through adventures and started being something that others could approve or disapprove of. It became an object of scrutiny.

“You need to watch her,” an aunt told my mom when she thought I couldn’t hear, “she’s getting too old to be cute chubby anymore, she’s going to be fat.”

My body was always just a little too big, and always threatening to be way too big. I was given warning after warning of what would happen if I didn’t get my body under control right now. I would be unhealthy, I might even die. Even worse: nobody would want to marry me.

By adulthood I moved in and out of “chubby”, “plus-sized”, and properly fat - where I have pretty permanently resided since my mid thirties. But even in my thin, obsessed over every bite I took mid-twenties, my body never returned to me, never became neutral, never became something I didn’t have to be aware of every waking day.

I remember one day in my late twenties realizing that I didn’t know how I looked until I got on the scale. I would stare in the mirror and think, “have I gained weight?” “have I lost weight?” “am I fat today?” And I wouldn’t know until I got on the scale. The scale would give me a number with which to see myself through others’ eyes. Every morning I would pick out an outfit I loved, put it on, look in the mirror, and have no idea how I looked until I went and got on the scale.

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Eventually I realized that this was not a healthy way to start a morning, and I got rid of my scale. But when you are fat, the world can be your scale. You can see numbers flash in your reflection as you walk down a busy sidewalk and glance at a store window, or in the eyes of those who observe you. I am not just fat, I’m tall and fat. I take up room that people say I’m not supposed to take up in all directions. I don’t fit in a lot of places, and I haven’t since my teen years. I haven’t ever been able to enter a waiting room without having to size up the chairs. I’m constantly ducking under things, squeezing into things, avoiding things that can’t be squeezed into. Sitting on airplanes while trying to will my body into the most still and compact form possible.

When I walk down the street, am I walking or am I lumbering? When I sit down, have I pulled my shirt out so it’s not clinging to rolls? When I cross my arms, am I slightly holding them out from my body so they don’t flatten and widen across my chest?

It takes so much time and energy to have a body in this world. Even as I’ve gotten older and have less and less interest in being seen as desirable by anybody except my partner. Even as I’ve insisted on wearing what I want. Even though I can now look in my own bathroom mirror at my naked reflection and genuinely love what I see, I’m always aware of how my body is seen and judged by others and that changes things.

But the woods were different. I had no clue how I looked all day, and there were no mirrors or store window reflections to tell me otherwise. I saw almost nobody until the evening, and I was aware that I would likely not see any of those people again.

Something about the hours and hours of quiet. Something about the evening campfire light and copious amounts of chocolate and marshmallows. My body returned to me and stopped being a body. For most of the day I was only aware of my body when I felt my leg muscles activate as I walked through the woods, when my stomach rumbled or I got a mosquito bite.

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Each night I showed up at the campfire rested and relaxed. I sat were I was comfortable. I talked with strangers and couldn’t see my reflection in their eyes and instead focused on their engagement with my words.

I didn’t know this was happening at the time. I didn’t realize how much was different. I was just existing in the most whole way I had existed in a long time.

My last day at the campsite, I decided I wanted to go into town for a meal. I had my usual morning in the tent and walking through the woods, then I got in my car and drove a half hour to a diner. I had a lovely lunch of tacos and a daytime margarita, a great way to end a week away. Then as I went to walk back to my car I caught a glimpse of my reflection in a shop window. Oh no. It was so much. So much compared to the other people walking next to me. And I was just walking around in casual clothes, no makeup on, not watching my posture, as if I had the body for that sort of carelessness. I remember thinking, “did I look like this, all week?”

It was then, as the pressure of having a body crashed back down upon me, that I realized how special that week had been. How nice it felt to be a ghost in the world for a while.

There are times I want to be seen. Where I want to share the creativity of my clothes. Where I want my unique combination of features to exist in the world and be recognized. There are times where I want to love how I look and I want to be loved in that same way by others.

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But there are other times where I want to run away to the woods forever. Where I want to remove my body from public commentary and secret it away to a gentler place.

I cannot move to the woods. My life and work exist outside of there. And my partner cannot spend more than 48 hours in the wilderness without becoming very cranky. So I’m trying to create little moments for myself when I can reclaim what is mine. I’m insisting on walking through my garden every morning in my robe and bonnet, checking each plant that I’ve raised from seed, ignoring anyone who walks by. I’m walking the trails any day it’s not raining and staring at the trees while I notice how the breeze feels on my arms. I’m trying to create at least one moment a day where it’s just me and my body, and I’m trying to appreciate it when it happens, instead of just mourning the moment when it’s over.

We’re told over and over again to hate our bodies. And eventually some of us do. And the further we are from the “ideal” body, the more we are told to hate it. I but I think most of us don’t really hate our bodies - in fact, I think most of us spend a lot of time feeling sad for our bodies than anything else. What we hate how exhausting it is to be seen and judged every single day. We hate is how the world takes our bodies from us and turns them into something that could be hated.

Some days my body is mine. I wish I could say it is every day, but it’s more moments than anything else. I am a person in this world and even though I’ve figured out how to care more about how the sun feels on my face than how I look in a group photo, it doesn’t mean that I’ve figured out how to not care at all. And I don’t beat myself up about that. I don’t tell myself that I shouldn’t care. Because it’s not my job to not care what others think of my body. It’s not my job to battle the entirety of our misogynistic, fat-phobic culture every day. It’s my job to love and care for myself and it’s the world’s job to mind its own damn business.

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I am not sure, exactly, how many ChatGPT signs, flyers, or advertisements I had seen without noticing. But I do remember that once I began noticing them, I saw them everywhere. A few blocks from my house, on a display easel: “Break Free Surfing California: SURF LESSONS VENICE BEACH.” On Instagram, a going out of business closeout sale for a skateboard shop. On invites to parties from friends, Fourth of July barbecues being thrown by bars, concert posters. I saw ChatGPT-designed advertisements for drug deliveries in Berlin, World Cup parties in France, junk hauling services in South Carolina, and fundraisers in Texas. The scourge of low effort, stylistically indistinguishable AI-generated signs and flyers have flooded both social media and, increasingly, posters, billboards, and signs in real life: “So ain’t nobody gonna address this ChatGPT flyer pandemic we’re in?” one viral post on Threads read last month.

“YOUR FLYER LOOKS LIKE GARBAGE,” a viral ChatGPT-generated parody of the genre posted by Jill Oliver reads. “Hey if this is your flyer, I’m not going, I’m not donating, I’m not sharing. Don’t ask me.” The “ChatGPT flyer pandemic” has become a big topic of conversation among graphic designers, musicians, bars, and small business owners who care about design and showing that they’ve put effort into something.

Once you notice a ChatGPT flyer, you will see them everywhere if you keep your eyes open. The art of the format is basically big, flashy bright text on dark background and an AI-generated or AI-altered image. There is almost universally a little box of generic icons in a bulleted list vaguely tied to whatever event or business it’s advertising, lines coming off of the text to emphasize whatever it’s saying, and either bolded words or underlined text and tons of arrows and checkmarks haphazardly strewn throughout. It is easier to just show you what they look like than describe it, because they all look basically the same:

The argument against ChatGPT-generated flyers is basically the same as the argument against all other types of AI slop: It looks generic, lazy, and like businesses don’t care. The designer Kenzi Green made a video about the backlash to AI flyers that has 870,000 views called “Customers are begging you to stop the AI slop.” Another video of a graphic designer putting his head in his hands and shaking his head while ChatGPT flyers scrolls past called “we are living in an AI flyer pandemic” has nearly 7 million views.

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A post shared by Kenzi ↠ Luxury Brand Identity + Website Designer (@kenzigreendesign)

“Your logo, food truck wrap, social media graphics, menus all look AI generated,” Green said. “People are going to be able to spot that from a mile away and choose the competitor next to you that looks like they actually hired a human being,” she said. “It might feel like you’re ‘saving time and money,’ but you’re actually slowly turning your brand into something generic like all the other brands out there using AI tools.”

The rejection of ChatGPT flyers infesting real life spaces is real, growing, and cuts across languages and borders. The New Jersey-based sticker company Death By Stickers has started selling a “CERTIFIED AI BULLSHIT” sticker for people to slap on ChatGPT flyers: “With your roll of 50 “CERTIFIED AI BULLSHIT” labels you can let everyone around town know when that flyer is AI SLOP,” the company says. The Thomas House Bar in Dublin has said it will stop letting people post AI flyers in its pub: “We’re not accepting AI posters or flyers for the pub,” the bar wrote on Instagram. “We’re right next to Ireland’s biggest art college, lads. It’s not a good look.” A venue in Oakland has banned AI flyers, too. I have seen anti-AI posters in Portuguese (“TUDO IGUAL: FLYER GERADO PELO CHATGT? CLARO QUE SIM!” Same old story: Flyer generated by ChatGPT? You bet!) and German (“BITTE KEINE FLYER MIT CHATGPT” Please don’t create flyers with ChatGPT). I have seen numerous viral posts from people saying that they will not go to businesses or events that use AI posters to promote, lest one get roped into a Fyre Fest or Willy Wonka AI hellscape experience. And I have begun seeing real graphic designers offering low-cost services for companies that promise not to use AI flyers. 

Jonathon Yule, executive creative director for design at the creative studio Concrete in Toronto told 404 Media that these types of posters continue a long tradition of terrible graphic design that we see in the world, but with “none of the charm” that may accidentally come from a business owner making something low quality. 

“Terrible posters are nothing new,” Yule said. “The only difference today is generative AI makes it easier than ever to get the veneer of "polish" with none of the charm that these types of posters might have had when the designer was faced with constraints (usually time, resources or experience). These types of posters would have typically been done by designers either working at a small agency or print shop and these mid-level design jobs are disappearing. Stepping back to think about where this style (and its acceptance in the world) might have come from I'm going to have to pin the blame on YouTube and AB-tested-whatever-gets-more-clicks approach to thumbnail design with the exaggerated facial expressions and shoddy yet eye catching typography.”

In the last few weeks, since I began noticing ChatGPT flyers, I’ve been taking photos of ones I’ve seen in real life, and have asked my friends to take photos of AI flyers they’ve seen out in the real world. I’ve seen them at Mexican restaurants and for surfing lessons in Los Angeles, on business cards for drug delivery services and on döner shops in Berlin, for pretzel shops in Philadelphia, and so on. I've tried at times to not notice these, but like with other AI, my brain feels like it is constantly trying to calculate whether any given sign or flyer was made using AI, and, if so, whether it actually matters.

These can be generated in ChatGPT easily by asking it to generate you a flyer or advertisement for any sort of event or business you can think of. ChatGPT routinely generated flyers that are essentially identical in format to what I see all the time when I threw random events at it: “Can you make a poster for my bar? It’s called Jason’s bar and we’re having a Fourth of July party. It goes from 4-10 pm and has food, fun, and fireworks,” and it instantly generated this, which is emblematic of the style.   

None of the ChatGPT posters have the “Graphic Design Is My Passion” charm of quickly dashed off or handwritten posters, nor even the unhinged excess you might see in, for example, a Softbank Vision Fund slide presentation. For my money, one of the most iconic pieces of graphic design of the last 20 years is “Friendship Ended With Mudasir, Now Salman is my best friend.” With a ChatGPT poster, you get none of the sheer emotion that comes through the page with a mouse-drawn X. Here’s to bringing back an MS Paint aesthetic, handwritten scribbles, or literally anything else. 

A year after cutting around 9,100 employees, Microsoft is making further layoffs today as it begins its new financial year. The software maker is laying off around 4,800 employees today, approximately 2.1 percent of its workforce. Most of the employees affected by today's cuts are in Microsoft's commercial sales business or the company's Xbox division.

In an internal memo to employees, Amy Coleman, executive vice president and Microsoft's chief people officer, blamed the job losses on a changing technology industry and the "need to adjust resources and roles and shift how we operate" to respond to how AI is impacting companies like Microsof …

Read the full story at The Verge.

It’s the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence (kind of, mostly) and I’m just not feeling it this year. Is it just me, or do things seem kind of “off” in the United States these days? Can’t put my finger on it.

Normally I try to do my optimistic thing where I stress that it’s the idea of the country that we celebrate, not the reality of it. I even made a go of it at the end of May.

But it seems especially hollow now, when ICE raids are still happening all across a nation founded by immigrants, and built on the idea of welcoming anyone who wants to participate in the ideals of the country, regardless of their ethnicity. We keep hearing story after story of people who’ve been living and working in this country for years, who keep being betrayed by this country’s corrupt government. Often abducted and taken from their homes and families while they’re reporting to immigration offices, trying to do it the so-called “right” way.

It’s an atrocity every day, but especially on a day where the perpetrators wrap themselves in the flag and claim to celebrate freedom and opportunity.

And it’s especially hollow when you actually read the Declaration of Independence — I haven’t myself in years, since Schoolhouse Rock made me more a fan of the Constitution — and notice how many of the “repeated injuries and usurpations” committed by King George are going on today, in broad daylight, not just defended but brazenly celebrated by some of the shittiest people ever to walk the planet.

Hot dogs and fireworks aren’t going to smooth over the problems of this country, and neither will voting for the self-interested, ineffectual dipshits who’ve spent the past several years telling us they’re our only hope.

Memo to Hakeem Jeffries, Chuck Schumer, and the rest of the uselessly centrist, corporate-sponsored Democrats who’ve utterly failed to meet the moment: “Whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government.” Maybe if a wave of progressivism, if not outright Democratic socialism, takes hold this fall, we might be able to start digging our way out without having to resort to the “abolish” option.¹

This morning I watched a video from Jackie of the Superenthused channel, as I often do, and saw all of the stuff that Epcot at Walt Disney World is doing to celebrate the 250th this 4th of July weekend. A lot of it, unsurprisingly, was around The American Adventure pavilion — meet and greets with the characters in colonial costumes, the Voices of Liberty performing (which is always pretty fantastic, in that something so corny and shamelessly patriotic can still give you goosebumps), and much of the American Adventure show.

That show is an impressive achievement in animatronics and stagecraft more than anything else, honestly. It does come closer than anything else I’ve seen at actually acknowledging the country’s long history of injustices and outright atrocities, even though it still mostly skips lightly along the surface.

It’s in that weird middle ground of not deep enough and also not shallow enough. If it were deeper, and actually tried to tackle any of American history head-on, it would be a downer for a theme park and frankly inappropriate. But it’s also not shallow or abstract enough to be “what America means to you is what’s important.”

There is one detail in the American Adventure pavilion that I’ve always noticed, though, and only really appreciated this year. In the lobby, there are all of these paintings on the walls, interspersed with notable quotes from people like Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, etc. One of them is from Ayn Rand.

I don’t remember what the actual quote is, because Ayn Rand sucks and produced nothing of value to offer to any decent human being. But I always remember its being there, interrupting the vibe of inspiration and opportunity and optimism with a big, stinky, wet fart.

It’s always seemed so out of place, and I wondered why anybody in Imagineering thought it was appropriate to put there. I never looked into it, because I preferred not to acknowledge the possibility that there were proud objectivists lurking behind the creation of a place I loved so much.

Now that I think about it, though, it is kind of perfect for a pavilion all about the American experience. For one thing, it’s a reminder that America has always been full of immigrants, both good and bad, who came here to seek opportunity. Many of them actually built the country. Some of them did nothing but reassure generations of mediocre white men that they were, in fact, Very Special Boys, and that everything they’d accomplished was solely the result of their own unique gifts.

And it’s also a reminder that it’s impossible to think of America, even at its most abstract, patriotic, and maudlin ideal, without also remembering that some of it is really shitty. Something to look forward to when we celebrate the 251st!

The fucks are gone.