chrisamico's blurblog

Lessons (and an apology) from the Sun-Times CEO on that AI-generated book list - Chicago Sun-Times
Friday May 30^th, 2025 at 5:01 PM

On Sunday, May 18, 2025, a seasonal edition went out to Chicago Sun-Times newspaper subscribers. The cover showed a happy child submerged in a pool. The title read: “Heat Index: Your Guide to the Best of Summer.”

One reader on Reddit commented, “I was actually excited when I opened Sunday’s paper because I thought it was the round up… with all the summer festivals.”

Reader, it was not.

Instead of the meticulously reported summer entertainment coverage the Sun-Times staff has published for years, these pages were filled with innocuous general content: hammock instructions, summer recipes, smartphone advice … and a list of 15 books to read this summer.

Of those 15 recommended books by 15 authors, 10 titles and descriptions were false, or invented out of whole cloth. Sixteen hours later, the journalist behind the piece ‘fessed up: rather than a reported recommendation list, this one had been generated by an AI agent.

It took a full 24 hours for someone to spot the error and speak up. Another eight hours passed until Chicago Public Media, the parent company of the Sun-Times, issued a correction.

The section was licensed from the third-party content provider King Features, a division of Hearst. The content wasn’t produced by Sun-Times journalists, nor was it reviewed by the newsroom prior to placement in the paper. The Sun-Times and King Features do not allow reporters to use AI to write articles. All the same, it was included under a Sun-Times banner for subscribers to read on Sunday morning.

The articles in these special editions, even if written by humans, are not particularly specific to Chicago. Worse, they were incorrect and seemed as if we were passing off AI-generated content to paying subscribers. This is not what our community — or our staff — wants from the Sun-Times.

At least one other local newspaper ran this section, and others likely would have the following weekend. Even though it wasn’t our actual work, the Sun-Times became the poster child of “What could go wrong with AI?”

But this isn’t just about AI. The summer section was intended to be a supplemental value to our subscribers alongside our own journalism. Instead it detracted and distracted from our work.

We won’t save our business through short-term revenue solutions that alienate and fail to engage our audience. We have to put our resources to overdelivering on quality that only we can bring to our audiences. Our journalists work to help our region have a better neighborhood, community and city — in part because that is the job they signed up for, and in part because it is their neighborhood, too.

Our product is our people; it was a tough day for our people at Chicago Public Media on Tuesday. Our very real human journalists should be celebrating several recent honors — two regional Edward R. Murrow Awards, a Dante Lifetime Achievement Award, a slew of Peter Lisagor Awards for exemplary journalism, as well as NABJ Salute to Excellence Awards.

Instead, those same journalists, and others across our organization, are frustrated, embarrassed and disappointed to suddenly be caught in the crosswinds of the wider conversation of how AI can go wrong, and among other things, threaten the value of local news that they have spent their careers working to fortify.

How did this happen?

Did AI play a part in our national embarrassment? Of course. But AI didn’t submit the stories, or send them out to partners, or put them in print. People did. At every step in the process, people made choices to allow this to happen.

The stories that made it to our print pages started with a freelancer working for King Features. Marco Buscaglia told 404 Media that he is a former full-time journalist who freelances in the evenings. To come up with the material for the summer section, he says he used an AI agent and sent his stories in without checking his work. Human mistakes Nos. 1 and 2.

Buscaglia’s stories arrived at King Features. King Features is conducting its own internal review, so it’s uncertain what broke down internally for it, but it’s likely that the team did not conduct a thorough fact-checking or copy editing process before sending Buscaglia’s work out to partners across the country, including the Sun-Times and the Philadelphia Inquirer. Human mistake No. 3.

King Features is known for providing local newspapers with crossword puzzles and comics, and it is part of Hearst, a large media company that manages dozens of newspapers, a large broadcast news network and hundreds of magazine editions globally. Members of our Sun-Times circulation department, who worked with King Features to select and insert the section, trusted that work licensed from King Features would live up to a level of editorial rigor that matches the standards of Chicago Public Media. Our circulation department did not submit the pages for review to anyone on our editorial team, nor acknowledge in print that the content was created by a third party. Instead, the department packaged it under a Sun-Times banner and sent it to homes across the region. Human mistake No. 4.

The circulation department made these choices because it was trying to help keep our finances as stable as possible. Historically, the Sun-Times printed premium editions about 10 times a year. We sell these editions for an extra amount — $3 apiece — when bundled with the strong journalistic value provided by the newsroom in our full Sunday offering. Previous premium editions have ranged from staff-produced comprehensive voter guides to rich, soulful reporting on this city’s sports landscape to entertainment guides written to help Chicagoans make the most of the packed summer season.

The Sun-Times still produces a print paper, but our editors also serve a growing digital audience with a 24-hour appetite for Chicago news. Producing a premium print edition can take weeks or months of work away from daily responsibilities. To work efficiently with finite resources, the newsroom scaled back to producing fewer premium editions each year. The circulation department wanted to find a creative solution to keep hitting our revenue goals while we transition from print to digital revenue. It found a potential solution with King Features.

The Sun-Times published the first one, “Summer Recipes,” in May 2024. I joined the organization as CEO in September 2024, and was asked if we should continue to publish these special editions. I didn’t deeply investigate the editions and quickly approved the team to continue the practice in place. My reasoning: Let’s not sacrifice any revenue. We published another King Features edition that November on “Holiday Magic,” and last week, the now-infamous “Heat Index.” Human mistake No. 5: my own.

On Sunday morning the section ran in print. On Monday night, a friend sent a friend a photo of the book list in the Sun-Times. That friend passed it on to another friend, Tina TBR, asking if the book recommendations were new releases. She posted the photo to her Instagram Stories, went back to dinner, and went to bed. On Tuesday morning, at 6:04 a.m. CST, one of her followers posted the photo to the social media site Bluesky.

At 8:44 a.m., the chief operating officer at Chicago Public Media emailed me: “Well this is a strange one. Sounds like some of the content on the purchased summer guide from Hearst was potentially made up… I’m not sure how differentiated it was for the reader… Sending to this group for next steps. A correction I assume, and quickly… [we’ve] reached out to Hearst.”

I thought the photograph was an AI-generated joke.

By 10:46 a.m., Jason Koebler of 404 Media tracked down the freelancer responsible for the book list and posted an interview with him. Buscaglia, a former reporter and editor for the Tribune Co., admitted to Koebler that, yes, the article had been created by an AI agent — in fact almost all of the material in the special section had been generated by an AI agent. Other inconsistencies in the section would come to light. The posts detailing these mistakes were shared widely on social media, and many think pieces followed about the future of journalism, decrying the potential bleak morass of AI slop leading to the inevitable failure of local newspapers.

I am sorry for our mistakes that brought us to this point, and I know that this incident will help us be smarter, more thoughtful and more prepared for the very real challenges ahead.

How can the journalism industry learn from this?

It’s easy to say AI is a problem. It’s a lot harder to work, collectively and individually, as humans to catch up and learn and understand how our industry and technology are changing around us. Those of us of a certain age can say from experience: We see this at every stage of the internet’s development; this current evolution is just happening an awful lot faster. If we keep blaming the technology, we’re never going to own the solution.

So, what will we take away from this? First, Chicago Public Media will not back away from experimenting and learning how to properly use AI. We will not be using AI agents to write our stories, but we will work to find ways to use AI technology to help our work and serve our audiences. We’ve started that work recently, in part thanks to a grant from The Lenfest Institute that helps fund an AI fellow to work alongside our journalists on responsible experiments.

We introduced our first draft of an AI policy earlier this year and plan to vet it further with members of various teams forming an AI Oversight Committee, including members from the newsroom, product, legal, insights, sponsorships and enterprise systems.

When we have finalized our AI policy, we’ll post it for our community to weigh in.

The content that ran in this summer guide would have violated the current draft of our AI policy if it had been created in-house without review. Our guidance directs the permitted and prohibited usage of generative AI to create content, the need for fact-checking and editorial review on anything AI-generated, and to always disclose significant use of AI tools.

Going forward, we’ve changed our editorial policy to ensure that any third-party licensed content 1) clearly states where it comes from, 2) is not presented as if it were created by our newsrooms, and 3) is reviewed by our new Standards team with editors from our newsrooms.

It’s fair to say: This experiment to offer nationally syndicated Sunday editorial work to our subscribers did not work. Buscaglia won’t work for King Features again, nor will he work at Chicago Public Media, but I respect that he owned up to his mistake and took the responsibility in public. That kind of accountability is increasingly rare. I believed him when he sent me a sincere apology.

We reviewed the previous two issues from King Features’ editorial department and found no factual discrepancies in the content. We also reviewed the Heat Index edition, and given that Buscaglia admitted he used an AI agent to create it, we removed the digital artifact of the section from our e-Paper edition and replaced it with a note from me. We also informed our subscribers that they would not be charged for that special edition.

We understand King Features is also an organization trying to navigate a new reality, and we plan to discuss lessons with it, as well as other news organizations, to find solutions on navigating this new technological reality. We don’t plan to use other editorial special sections from King Features, but we plan to continue to syndicate comics and puzzles from it, as we have for decades. People do love Garfield.

A few lessons we’ll take from this:

This is how journalism works.

These changes will hopefully help us avoid mistakes like this summer guide in the future. I’m sure other mistakes and errors will occur, and we will have to acknowledge, correct and learn from those as well. That’s a vital and profoundly important part of journalism: We do correct, acknowledge and learn from our errors. Journalism is the first draft of history.

Part of its value is that journalism is a work in progress, as we are all works in progress. So here we are: rewriting this first (or second, or third) draft of AI in journalism.

We must own our humanity.

Our humanity makes our work valuable. We’ve seen a huge decline in people trusting institutions since the 1970s — all levels of government, religious institutions, universities, and, yes, the media. Mix in a lot of talk about “fake news” and a more polarized society? We’re up against a lot. Of course, a section with stories based on AI hallucinations isn’t going to solve this trust problem.

Even though our newsroom has had to shrink in size to adjust to business realities, we’ve made a hard bet that we can (and do!) deliver some of the best journalism for and about Chicago. I’ve been reading the comments — and they are understandably tough on us — but there were also comments like this:

“Please don’t lose sight of the core public good that newspapers perform... The hard news section of the Sun Times is remarkably good. If you read it they’ll tell you every major issue that comes before the city council, who is on which side, and what parties have donated to each of those alders. They’ll tell you what money the Bears and the White Sox are trying to get for new stadiums, and how different politicians are voting. They’ll tell you which bike lanes are getting built and who is for and against them.”

Studies show that local journalism allows communities to be more civically engaged, less polarized, and root out real corruption at the local level. This is all the more urgent as public media faces federal funding cuts.

A week before the book list, the Sun-Times went viral for another reason: our cheeky front page announcing the new pope with a gleeful headline that read “Da Pope!” The pope’s brother was snapped proudly holding the Sun-Times newspaper up. That picture went around the world. We didn’t get that headline from an AI agent. We got it from a bunch of editors making jokes with one another in the newsroom, and then a bunch of editors and reporters arguing about the best way to present the news of the day to our audience. And so we ended up with a decidedly Chicagoan, decidedly human front page that captured the moment of joy and surprise. That’s the kind of work we want to be known for.

The financial pressures on local journalism are real. Help us solve them.

If you were angered about this, and you appreciate valuable local reporting — support your local news outlets. These errors are smaller missteps in the face of much more systemic issues challenging journalism: from a technology industry focused on addicting people to platforms to a presidential administration accusing most media organizations of being fake news.

Finally, please buy books. The book list offered up titles and descriptions that were fake for 10 of the 15 books. But the authors of those 10 books are very real, and are very, very good writers. So let me end where I wished we’d started: These books by these authors do exist, and I highly recommend them:

Support the journalism Chicago relies on. When you give, you support local journalists doing vital work and ensure your community has access to critical information.

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chrisamico

1 day ago

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Boston, MA

Come At Me, Bro | Opinion | The Harvard Crimson
Wednesday May 28^th, 2025 at 10:20 PM

Recently, the Harvard administration has engaged in an admirable strategy which might be summarized as: “We shall fight in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts. We shall fight in mild-mannered Jewish doctor interviews with the Wall Street Journal. We shall fight in the court of public opinion by subtly taking on many of the reforms that are being asked of us, but claiming we were going to do it all along.”

It is hard to tell which approach, exactly, would land with the Trump administration. Some have argued that the MAGA right only respects self-respect, and that in order to win against Trump we need to stand up and be strong. (That hasn’t worked yet.) Some argue that there is no way to win, and universities must swallow major concessions in order to retain their funding. (So far that hasn’t worked, either.)

I propose an alternate strategy: I shall fight Secretary of Education Linda E. McMahon in a televised cage match, the winner of which gets $2.7 billion in federal grants and the power to uphold or destroy America’s continued technological and economic success. Secretary, I hope you brought your mouth guard.

Linda — can I call you Linda? — I’ve spent weeks trying to get into your head. My Google Docs is littered with abandoned drafts for every time you have promised this is really it, you are really taking Harvard’s funding this time, no please notice me, here goes another $60 million.

But I have been met with failure. Maybe it’s because I didn’t get married at 17, or because I’ve never witnessed my husband get his head shaved by Donald Trump on national television, or because my pedagogical experience leans more front-of-classroom, rather than distributing-bookmarks-featuring-scantily-clad-lady-wrestlers. Some way or another, I’ve never been quite able to figure out how you think.

Until now.

Secretary, you spent nearly three decades as a WWE executive, where you orchestrated such spectacles as “The Undertaker vs. Kane: WrestleMania XIV” and “WWF Badd Blood: In Your House.” Suffice to say, you respect a good fight. And thus I say: Come at me, bro.

In my Jewish name you and your entourage have destroyed research on cancer and heart disease, threatened to essentially deport my friends, and tried to increase Harvard’s tax burden fifteenfold. Stop it. Put that down. Let’s settle this like biological women: knock-down, TKO, cage match.

Each of us will get a backup. I choose Joe Blitzstein, he’s huge. You can have Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem; I’ll be sure to hide my dog. If Harvardians are really the lib wimps you say we are, surely you aren’t afraid to throw hands.

Some might argue that putting somebody in a figure-four leg lock has little relevance to “combating antisemitism” or “encouraging common-sense reforms of disciplinary procedures and ideological bias in hiring.” I would argue, though, that choreographed physical violence has about as much to do with the issues at hand as the current strategy of slashing research funding via Twitter diatribes and Canva graphics. Cut the political kayfabe. You want to make us bleed? Then why not just throw a chair at us.

I know, I know, that all this is really because Harvard is the symbol of everyone’s least favorite concept: the elite. But why don’t we make this whole punching bag metaphor literal? I understand if lucha libre is too ethnic for you; Anarchy in the Arena works too.

Right now, as a (non-Marxist) friend of mine wisely pointed out, “this is like in elementary school when one person doesn’t clean up snack so they take away snack for everyone.” We don’t need to indulge this ridiculous collective punishment, which if anything, is more similar to when one person doesn’t clean up snack, so they demolish the part of the classroom where that kid never plays anyway. I promise you, the “Free Palestine” people aren’t spending all their free time in the protozoa lab.

And I know, I know, you love the bit where you’re like “I am working tirelessly to protect the Jewish students abandoned by rabid antisemite Alan Garber!!!” But let me tell you, missy, when you threaten to deport my co-conspirator in writing the weekly Shabbat joke newsletter, along with the literal Israelis who I practice my literal Hebrew with on literal Wednesday mornings, then you really start to lose whatever credibility you had left.

Enough is enough (is enough). I’ll see you on the mat.

Yona T. Sperling-Milner ’27, an Associate Editorial Editor, is a Social Studies concentrator in Cabot House. Like Secretary McMahon, she too sometimes wonders, “Why is there so much HATE?”???

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chrisamico

3 days ago

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Boston, MA

Twenty Lessons, read by John Lithgow
Monday May 19^th, 2025 at 10:33 AM

https://transcendloneliness.substack.com/

Here is my best guidance for action, rendered beautifully by the great John Lithgow. I first published these lessons more than eight years ago, in late 2016. They open the twenty chapters of On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. Millions of you, around the world, have put these lessons to good use; it has been humbling to learn how from courageous and creative dissenters, protestors, and oppositionists. I am delighted to have this special chance now to share the lessons again. I was honored when John, a wise advocate for civil discourse and civic engagement, volunteered to read them aloud.

Above is his film. Below is the text, excerpted from the book. Do share this.

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1. Do not obey in advance. Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do.

2. Defend institutions. It is institutions that help us to preserve decency. They need our help as well. Do not speak of "our institutions" unless you make them yours by acting on their behalf. Institutions do not protect themselves. They fall one after the other unless each is defended from the beginning. So choose an institution you care about -- a court, a newspaper, a law, a labor union -- and take its side.

3. Beware the one-party state. The parties that remade states and suppressed rivals were not omnipotent from the start. They exploited a historic moment to make political life impossible for their opponents. So support the multiple-party system and defend the rules of democratic elections. Vote in local and state elections while you can. Consider running for office.

4. Take responsibility for the face of the world. The symbols of today enable the reality of tomorrow. Notice the swastikas and the other signs of hate. Do not look away, and do not get used to them. Remove them yourself and set an example for others to do so.

5. Remember professional ethics. When political leaders set a negative example, professional commitments to just practice become more important. It is hard to subvert a rule-of-law state without lawyers, or to hold show trials without judges. Authoritarians need obedient civil servants, and concentration camp directors seek businessmen interested in cheap labor.

6. Be wary of paramilitaries. When the men with guns who have always claimed to be against the system start wearing uniforms and marching with torches and pictures of a leader, the end is nigh. When the pro-leader paramilitary and the official police and military intermingle, the end has come.

7. Be reflective if you must be armed. If you carry a weapon in public service, may God bless you and keep you. But know that evils of the past involved policemen and soldiers finding themselves, one day, doing irregular things. Be ready to say no.

8. Stand out. Someone has to. It is easy to follow along. It can feel strange to do or say something different. But without that unease, there is no freedom. Remember Rosa Parks. The moment you set an example, the spell of the status quo is broken, and others will follow.

9. Be kind to our language. Avoid pronouncing the phrases everyone else does. Think up your own way of speaking, even if only to convey that thing you think everyone is saying. Make an effort to separate yourself from the internet. Read books.

10. Believe in truth. To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis upon which to do so. If nothing is true, then all is spectacle. The biggest wallet pays for the most blinding lights.

11. Investigate. Figure things out for yourself. Spend more time with long articles. Subsidize investigative journalism by subscribing to print media. Realize that some of what is on the internet is there to harm you. Learn about sites that investigate propaganda campaigns (some of which come from abroad). Take responsibility for what you communicate with others.

12. Make eye contact and small talk. This is not just polite. It is part of being a citizen and a responsible member of society. It is also a way to stay in touch with your surroundings, break down social barriers, and understand whom you should and should not trust. If we enter a culture of denunciation, you will want to know the psychological landscape of your daily life.

13. Practice corporeal politics. Power wants your body softening in your chair and your emotions dissipating on the screen. Get outside. Put your body in unfamiliar places with unfamiliar people. Make new friends and march with them.

(Nota bene, jumping away from the text for a moment: there will be chances to practice corporeal politics all over the USA on April 5th).

14. Establish a private life. Nastier rulers will use what they know about you to push you around. Scrub your computer of malware on a regular basis. Remember that email is skywriting. Consider using alternative forms of the internet, or simply using it less. Have personal exchanges in person. For the same reason, resolve any legal trouble. Tyrants seek the hook on which to hang you. Try not to have hooks.

15. Contribute to good causes. Be active in organizations, political or not, that express your own view of life. Pick a charity or two and set up autopay. Then you will have made a free choice that supports civil society and helps others to do good.

16. Learn from peers in other countries. Keep up your friendships abroad, or make new friends in other countries. The present difficulties in the United States are an element of a larger trend. And no country is going to find a solution by itself. Make sure you and your family have passports.

17. Listen for dangerous words. Be alert to use of the words "extremism" and "terrorism." Be alive to the fatal notions of "emergency" and "exception." Be angry about the treacherous use of patriotic vocabulary.

18. Be calm when the unthinkable arrives. Modern tyranny is terror management. When the terrorist attack comes, remember that authoritarians exploit such events in order to consolidate power. The sudden disaster that requires the end of checks and balances, the dissolution of opposition parties, the suspension of freedom of expression, the right to a fair trial, and so on, is the oldest trick in the Hitlerian book. Do not fall for it.

19. Be a patriot. Set a good example of what America means for the generations to come. They will need it.

20. Be as courageous as you can. If none of us is prepared to die for freedom, then all of us will die under tyranny.

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The book On Tyranny

For solutions see On Freedom

Info on April 5th protests

Film Credits: John Lithgow read. Sean McGowan, producer of PoliticsGirl, directed and edited. Special thanks to Abigail Disney, Susan Disney Lord, and Timothy Disney. The executive producer was David Bender.

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chrisamico

12 days ago

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Boston, MA

‘I came out as autistic. Everyone said: That explains a lot’
Monday May 12^th, 2025 at 7:10 PM

The first time Facebook tried to sell me an autism test, it seemed presumptuous. I’d wondered about it, of course. But I couldn’t be autistic. Someone would have spotted it. Like one of those doctors I was taken to as a baby to work out why I hated to be held. Or my parents, who read books about families fighting to cure their sons of a devastating affliction. That wasn’t me, was it? I was productive. I was successful. I wasn’t disabled.

I did not take an autism test that day. But I did take a call from my mother at lunchtime. We chatted about how Instagram was always trying to sell her the oddest things. “I know,” I chuckled, “Facebook thinks I’m autistic!”

There was a silence. ‘‘I was wondering if we’d ever have this conversation,” said Mum.

That conversation was the lipstick on the collar of the life I thought I’d been leading. I found more evidence between the lines of school reports, college transcripts, breakup letters. In an old photo sent to me by a family friend, where she and her sister are smiling for the camera on my mother’s lap, it takes a second to spot myself in the photo, quivering in a ball of malfunctioning-five-year old.

What do we know about autism? We know it’s a form of cognitive difference that is also a disability – and how disabling it is depends as much on your social circumstances as it does on your symptoms. For as long as records have been kept, a small percentage of the species has been meaningfully different to other people and meaningfully similar to each other. We are odd, obsessive and socially oblivious. We find the world noisy, intense, overwhelming. Some of us struggle to speak and care for ourselves; some of us have extreme fixations or unusual talents. I have an uncanny ability not only to remember the lyrics of every song I’ve ever heard but to repeat them at the least socially appropriate moment.

Doctors began to classify autism as a condition in the 1930s, when there was something of a vogue for eliminating human difference. Up until the early 00s, most researchers blamed parents. But autism is not caused by bad parenting or heavy metal poisoning or vaccines. It’s largely genetic. And there’s no known “cure”, although most research funding is still funnelled into finding one, the focus being on fixing disabled people, not helping us.

After a recent surge in diagnosis, it is believed about 2% of the population has significant autistic traits. There are about as many of us as there are twins or natural redheads. Critics bemoan an “epidemic” of “overdiagnosis”, but over time, the number of people with autistic traits has stayed pretty consistent. What has changed is how many of us know. So many that there’s now a standard way to tell the rest of this story. I’m supposed to reassure you with an upbeat tale of self-acceptance. Instead I’m going to make things awkward and tell the truth.

‘Facebook thinks I’m autistic,’ I said to my mum. There was a silence

From an early age, I was obviously different. I was an intense, spooky, undersized child who refused to come out from under the table. But in the 1990s, I lacked one of the major qualifiers for diagnosis – a penis.

The stereotypical autistic person is still a white man who solves crimes with science. Even today, autistic men are more likely to grow up understanding they have a problem, whereas autistic women and non-binary people learn we are a problem. Most of the recent surge in adult diagnosis is in adult women who were missed as children. The standard excuse for this is that women and girls are “better at masking”. But autism is not, in my experience, an invisible condition. It is an illegible condition. When an autistic woman does not read as autistic, she rarely reads as ordinary. She reads as insane or perhaps evil. I spent decades worrying that I was both.

The first time I can remember getting smacked in the face by a classmate for thinking I was special, I was six. But I learned I could compensate for my oddness by racking up achievements. If I worked hard, I’d get to be gifted rather than just freakish. At no point did I think anyone else, disabled or otherwise, was worthless if they weren’t accomplished, just that I wasn’t like other people.

Years later, as I waited to take the actual autism test, I was still telling myself how lucky I was. Obviously, I had the good sort of autism. The sort that gets called “high-functioning”, which means nobody has to worry about looking after you. The sort where one day, if you’re lucky, Benedict Cumberbatch might play you in a film. As long as you work hard, win prizes and hide all the parts of you that aren’t polished and productive.

But the older you get, the harder it is to mask. For years, I scrupulously avoided every situation where someone might see me overwhelmed by sound, stammering and struggling with keys and cutlery. Noisy pubs. Office jobs. Long-term relationships. I spent years living out of suitcases to avoid managing a household. I hoarded little jackets for every conceivable social situation. I dyed my hair shocking pink, partly to make my ambient strangeness seem intentional, like framing a crack in the wall. I was always friendly, never angry, and carried on racking up achievements to compensate for the fact I was, on some fundamental level, broken. None of it was enough. People could always tell. Studies have shown that children begin to identify and punish autistic traits from a young age. Human beings reinforce social norms by hurting people who break them.

A memory: I’m eight years old. It’s assembly and a teacher I don’t know turns round in his chair and screams that I’m the rudest girl in the school. I stand there, frozen, as the laughter starts. I know this tweedy, angry man is right. I know I’m exhausting and embarrassing and disgusting, although I never find out what I’ve done this time, because of what happens next. I notice the teacher has big bags under his red-rimmed eyes. I’ve read that this means he’s tired, sad or sick. The solution is obvious. In front of the whole school, I pat his arm and say: “Are you OK?”

Anxious to understand where I was going wrong, I studied the maxims of children’s TV, where cartoon mice and puppet dinosaurs insisted it was OK to be strange. It didn’t occur to me that the singing dinosaur would lie, so I was confused as to why I kept getting bullied.

For me, the real value of my autism diagnosis isn’t understanding myself. It’s understanding other people. It turns out you lot are constantly emotionally resonating at a frequency I just can’t hear. It turns out that, actually, most people are uncomfortable around social difference and get considerably less comfortable when you point it out.

When I started to discuss my diagnosis with friends, I was expecting at least some surprise. Gosh, they’d say, we’d never have guessed. You’re so slick and put-together. You must have a lot of little jackets. And then I could show them my collection. In fact, there’s been a pretty even split between “That explains a lot” and “Wait, you didn’t know?”

One of the most autistic things I’ve ever done is believe it would be straightforward to come out as autistic. Six months after I tried to show a person I loved my real, unmasked self, I was decisively divorced. Soon after that, for the first time in front of colleagues, I had the sort of shutdown where everyone sees you stammer and twitch and retreat behind your eyes – and the gig was up. My bosses told me my work was wonderful and I shouldn’t worry. I was fired the next day.

Modern culture congratulates itself on “autism acceptance” with the confidence of a lying lying cartoon dinosaur. The reality of stigma and social shame is exactly why my friends and family avoided talking about my autism for so long. Discretion was supposed to protect me. But it rarely does. In fact, neurodivergent people face just as much ostracism and violence when we don’t reveal our diagnoses. I’ve been incredibly lucky; not everyone with my symptoms is able to work and live independently. But how many more of us could if we were met halfway by a culture that actually values human difference?

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acdha

19 days ago

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Washington, DC

chrisamico

19 days ago

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Boston, MA

What to Know about Death By Lightning Series: Cast, Release Date, News - Netflix Tudum
Thursday May 8^th, 2025 at 8:27 PM

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chrisamico

23 days ago

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Boston, MA

The Truth About Default Gold Warriors by Beatrice J.
Wednesday April 30^th, 2025 at 10:19 AM

The Grappler's Watch

In 2025 so far across 48 open tournaments, the IBJJF has given out approximately 25,000 (9,300 gold, 7,357 silver and 8,324 bronze) medals to juvenile, adult, and masters competitors, which surely you have noticed all over Facebook and Instagram. What you might not see though, is that more than a third (8,312) of those medals were given when the participant either had no matches (default gold) or lost their only match (default silver or bronze).

Now, I’m not here to de-merit the guy who posts about getting silver in a two-man division. This is just a data project illustrating where all the medals are going.

There are a lot of default medals in the masters divisions.

74 percent of all default medals were awarded in the masters categories, where divisions tend to be smaller.

More than a quarter of all masters division gold medals were single person divisions or divisions where two competitors signed up but only one showed up. 39 percent of masters silver medals were awarded for losing one match, and half of all masters bronze medals were awarded for losing one match.

By sheer numbers, black belts are picking up the most default medals.

One way of looking at the data is by raw numbers, although this might also approximate division sizes. There simply are not that many masters 4, 5 or 6 female athletes, so they naturally didn’t collect as many default medals. Generally, there is a tendency of more default golds in the black belt divisions, where there are usually also more athletes.

Female athletes are getting more default golds.

Another way to slice the data is by percentage. So, of all the gold medals earned this year so far, what percentage of them were snagged without a match taking place? Women in almost every category were more likely to stay in single athlete divisions or show up to a two person division where the other athlete no-showed.

There are just a lot of medals out there.

For a little perspective, every IBJJF tournament offers registration across 95 adult divisions and 665 masters divisions. You can do this math on your own — 9 and 10 weight divisions for female and male athletes (including open class) x 7 age divisions (adult, masters 1-7) x 5 belt color levels (white through black). Not every division has participants, but that’s a maximum of 760 divisions x 4 medals per division, or up to 3040 medals per tournament.

In reality, a major tournament like the IBJJF Europeans handed out around 2,000 medals. A regular IBJJF open tournament (Atlanta Winter, Virginia Summer, etc) might hand out on average around 500 medals.

In any given open, we’re looking at around an average of 50 default gold medals, and another 130 silver and bronze medals that were won without winning a match.

Why would anyone collect a default gold medal anyway?

There are a couple logistical reasons someone might show up for their free medal.

In the colored belts, being on the podium qualifies you for open class, where you can get more matches.
A gold medal earns your 27 points for your weight division and 40.5 points for your overall IBJJF ranking, which affects your seeding at future tournaments.
At adult black belt, you need those points to qualify for Pans and Worlds

That being said, the IBJJF offers a full refund if you’re alone in your division by check day, so you have to do the personal math if the above reasons are worth your 130-170 USD registration fee. Plus, Instagram clout!

If you want to earn gold by winning, you’ll probably have to win two matches.

When we take a look at the distribution of gold medals this year, most of them were won after one or two matches. In bigger divisions at open tournaments, some will require three wins (up to 8 people in the bracket) but rarely more than that.

A lot more people sign up for grand slam tournaments, and a big one like Pans might be the first time a competitor has to shift from winning two matches to winning three or four matches to win. Adult male colored belt divisions might have to win up to six matches for gold, and many of the masters male black belt divisions have to win up to five. One lucky guy in adult male blue feather fought a record (this year) of seven matches in his division to win gold at Europeans.

This might have implications on how you train for a major tournament. Even if an athlete can win multiple opens taking out one or two opponents at a time, they’ll need double the mental and physical grit to do it against three to five opponents on the same day at a major.

About the data

Thanks to Will Weisser and IBJJF Elo Rankings for providing the match data for this project. IBJJFRankings.com ranks competitors and provides a comprehensive database of matches in events run by the International Braziliation Jiu-Jitsu Federation. It is an independent site and are not affiliated with the IBJJF.

Support my work

These articles take me an average of 10 to 12 hours to analyze data, make charts, and write. If you would like to support me, please check out my jiujitsu sticker shop.

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chrisamico

31 days ago

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Boston, MA

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The Truth About Default Gold Warriors by Beatrice J. Wednesday April 30th, 2025 at 10:19 AM

There are a lot of default medals in the masters divisions.

By sheer numbers, black belts are picking up the most default medals.

Female athletes are getting more default golds.

There are just a lot of medals out there.

Why would anyone collect a default gold medal anyway?

If you want to earn gold by winning, you’ll probably have to win two matches.

About the data

Support my work

Lessons (and an apology) from the Sun-Times CEO on that AI-generated book list - Chicago Sun-Times
Friday May 30^th, 2025 at 5:01 PM

Come At Me, Bro | Opinion | The Harvard Crimson
Wednesday May 28^th, 2025 at 10:20 PM

Twenty Lessons, read by John Lithgow
Monday May 19^th, 2025 at 10:33 AM

‘I came out as autistic. Everyone said: That explains a lot’
Monday May 12^th, 2025 at 7:10 PM

What to Know about Death By Lightning Series: Cast, Release Date, News - Netflix Tudum
Thursday May 8^th, 2025 at 8:27 PM

The Truth About Default Gold Warriors by Beatrice J.
Wednesday April 30^th, 2025 at 10:19 AM