Identifying whether or not AI wrote what you're reading.

I stumbled into a moment of gestalt when I realized I really was raging against the machine.

Will Storr is to blame for what you’re about to experience next.

His article about how AI is used on various Substack accounts blew my mind not because I was surprised it was happening (though mildly so), but because I finally saw how stupid I’d been as to why I was feeling frustration with what I was reading on the Supposedly Erudite Platform for Long Form Readers And Writers.

I say supposedly, because the last thing I wrote on here had a thinly veiled fart joke so there’s that.

Anyway, Storr plainly laid out what was bugging me all that time, and it was a question of whether or not AI wrote this.

If you’re a reader who also has an account on Substack and read the Notes feed (sort of like Twitter/X except theoretically more erudite but again, I’m on here), you may have noticed, the past year or so, that I’d lose my mind once in a while about the overly precious, wispy and ethereal intellectual pablum getting mass likes and reposts and clogging my feed which, like Instagram, I’m trying to turn into a finely honed feed of art and cats.

Yet the deep thoughts would keep popping up as a recommendation, and they weren’t even the good kind of deep thoughts, like the kind Jack Handey provided years ago. They fit into a similar category I find myself thinking when I watch Americans on any show on TLC, watch Trainspotting, hear the younger generation talk, or…read AI: I can tell that it’s English words, but I just can’t understand it.

Maybe it’s the arrangement, the twang, the jargon, the slang. It’s like gaslighting for the everyday conversation, everyone else nodding in agreement and understanding while you’re completely confused.

At the end of his article, Storr provides a prompt you can use at ChatGPT to generate the very content he wrote about. I decided to use it once I figured out where ChatGPT was on the interwebs.

“Write a motivational, mindfulness-style essay about cats. Make it poetic, uplifting, and emotionally resonant and reflective, like a piece someone might read on a mindfulness blog, support group, or Substack newsletter.”

I am going to provide you with the ChatGPT essay, and then my own, as I would have written it. I will write it as quickly as I can, in about 45 minutes (slow compared to AI’s 30 seconds), and I will not read the ChatGPT essay before writing my own to avoid cross-contamination and possible GMO by-products.

I think you’ll find that Storr, as he closes out his own essay about the AI bastardization of Substack, was correct in the best ways a flesh-and-blood writer can differentiate their writing from the machine. And in the absolute monetary brilliance and accuracy of his ChatGPT prompt.

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The Quiet Teachers: What Cats Can Teach Us About Stillness, Grace, and Being by ChatGPT, Techbros, and the PR company in charge of the Apocalypse

There is a quiet kind of wisdom that walks on four paws and weaves itself into the sunlit corners of our lives. It doesn’t speak our language, but it knows how to listen. It doesn’t hurry, doesn’t apologize for rest, doesn’t chase noise for the sake of distraction. It curls into itself with full permission to simply be. This wisdom wears fur, blinks slowly, and answers to no name unless it chooses to.

This is the wisdom of the cat.

In a world obsessed with productivity, cats offer an exquisite rebellion: the art of presence. They sleep when tired. They stretch when stiff. They do not force the moment into a shape it is not ready to hold. A cat will sit for hours in the same patch of light, entirely content, as though the shaft of afternoon sun were enough to answer every question that ever was. And perhaps, in some wordless way, it is.

There is something in that stillness—a mirror, perhaps, or a message. Something that says: You do not always need to be chasing, proving, fixing, striving. Sometimes it is enough to be soft and warm and aware of the wind brushing against the window.

Cats move through the world with the grace of those who trust themselves. They do not ask for permission to take up space. They stretch long across your keyboard or steal the center of your bed as if to say: This world is mine too, and I deserve comfort.

What would it mean if we lived with even a sliver of that self-assurance?

When you watch a cat observe the world—eyes wide and unblinking, whiskers twitching as a breeze rustles a curtain—it becomes clear: to notice is a sacred act. A cat doesn't look at the world with judgment or agenda. It simply notices. The moment is enough. Presence is enough.

In our lives, cluttered with deadlines, worries, and what-ifs, how often do we pause to simply notice? The warmth of a cup between our palms. The way light spills over a bookshelf. The sound of our own breath, steady and ongoing.

Cats are not just companions. They are reminders. They remind us that slowness is not laziness, that solitude is not loneliness, and that healing often comes not from doing, but from allowing. Allowing ourselves to feel, to rest, to listen.

To heal, we must sometimes become soft again.

When a cat purrs, it does not perform. It does not demand attention for its joy. It simply resonates with contentment. And maybe that's something we can learn too—that joy does not have to be loud to be real. That peace can hum quietly beneath the surface, steady as a heartbeat.

So the next time you feel scattered, overwhelmed, or untethered, find a quiet spot. Sit with your breath, like a cat in a patch of sun. Feel the earth beneath you. Let your spine lengthen. Let your muscles soften. Let your thoughts come and go like birds at the window.

And remember: there is an animal in your life, or perhaps only in your memory, who has been teaching you mindfulness all along.

Not with words.

But with every stretch, every slow blink, every quiet moment of complete, unapologetic presence.

We don’t need to chase peace. Sometimes, we only need to curl up beside it—and rest.

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Spending An Additional $70 On A Fat Cat Who Has Lost His Self-Control by Julie R. Neidlinger, art major who successfully paid off her student loan

I don’t know what day it happened, but my cat Malcolm lost his ability to control himself in front of the food dish. To be fair, he held out a lot longer than I did.

I suspect it was during a Poirot marathon in which, no matter how many times he tossed his empty food bowl around, I did not respond. He did everything but call me Seymour. I admit to purposefully ignoring his requests because I’m tired of being successfully trained by a household pet.

Since cats are better than dogs, they can be left at home alone for several days without needing anyone to check on them. True, the state of your carpets and power cords will be different when you get back home from your fun weekend vacation, but the cat will still be alive.

Having already invested in a large watering jug device that uses gravity to dispense water when the level gets too low—a device I recently triumphed over by identifying the problem that it can never be set to have a full jug as well as a full dish, yet coming up with a system of having a glass of water ready so that the minute I set the thing down and the jug starts filling up the dish, I pour the water in and maintain a more-full jug—it was time to invest in a device that dispensed dry food in a regulated manner.

Because you can’t just set out large bowls of food and expect the cat to ration that food, it turns out. Oh, you could for six years, according to my double-blind study of the one cat.

But watch out for year seven, the year Malcolm “Chubbins” Paddington III has taken to viewing his food as homework and we know a good boy does his homework. All of it. 100’s on all the quizzes.

It pains me that my cat is literally sitting in the catbird seat on every level, but I hope he enjoys waiting for the programmed machine to tell him what he can eat and when, as if he were living in communism, which is still a huge threat today.

Image © Julie R. Neidlinger. All rights reserved.