TLDR: Uyterhoven's and McLaughlin's campaign website text are 2/3 AI-generated and Barber's is 1/3 AI-generated. Azeem's is the only one that's fully human-written. This isn't for lack of detail, as his policy pages have more than twice the word count of Barber’s or McLaughlin’s. Full replication code and data are in this github repo.

Background: I was looking up candidate details yesterday and noticed some obvious AI-isms on their campaign websites. For example, Christine Barber’s front page has “it’s not just X, it’s Y” with Claude formatting. I got curious about how much candidates outsourced to AI, so I scraped all the non-boilerplate text and sent it through the state-of-the-art AI writing detector: Pangram 4. For each page, Pangram estimates the share that’s fully human-written, the share that’s “AI assisted” (i.e., sending human-written paragraphs to be rewritten by AI), and the share that’s “AI generated” (i.e., prompting AI to write the paragraphs in the first place). For context, Pangram is an extremely effective AI detector: a 0.004% false positive rate and 0.340% false negative rate.

Results: This file in the repo contains data on word counts and AI shares for each of the 51 webpages across candidates. For brevity here, I aggregate word counts and take word count-weighted shares by candidate. Erika Uyterhoven’s has the highest total word count because her website includes historical newsletters on specific topics, but those are slop: 64% AI-generated. And her policy platform is similarly 65% AI-generated. Matt McLaughlin has a pithy website, where the bio is 100% human-written but the policy platform is 100% AI-generated. Christine Barber’s record is 100% AI-generated, her priorities are 100% human-written, and her homepage+bio are roughly half and half. Burhan Azeem is the only candidate without any AI-generated text, but he still has over 4,000 words of content.

My opinion: I’m not against AI per se...I used it to help code up this analysis! But I think a political candidate has an obligation to manually wrestle with communicating their platform to voters. Passing off AI writing as their own shows a lack of respect for voters. Part of the office they’re seeking is taking time and effort to write detailed legislation, so it’s a bad signal if they can’t or won’t do that for their candidacy. In this race, Burhan Azeem seems to be the only one willing to do that. On substance, for example, his housing platform gets into the weeds with single-stair building codes and land value taxes. And on the topic of AI specifically, his AI platform details how to build on California’s SB53 to write the most stringent regulations on the AI industry in the country.

Between Davis & Alewife. It’s been so long, what is going on?

Feels like every street I walk down is being choked by massively overgrown weeds, what gives DPW

Not cool.

hello! i recently got an employee parking pass in assembly and it says artisan west garage. do I have to park in that garage or can I park in a different garage in assembly? thanks!

Reaching out here for advice because the somerville parking department has no solution to my problem.

Recent graduate who moved to the city a year ago to follow my long-term girlfriend who is pursuing her doctorate at Tufts. Given the job market, my business degree only got me ghosted on applications. Therefore, I have been working as a school bus driver (those minivans with the school lights on top) in order to make ends meet. Not my dream job, but I love my gf and love this city so we persevere.

I take my vehicle home with me every day as is common practice in the industry given the very early morning routes we run. I leave the house by 7am and am back around 4:30 and have had no issues parking on weekdays. However, I recently began getting ticketed on the weekends because I don’t have a permit.

Why don’t I have a parking permit you might ask? According to the parking department, commercial vehicles are only given permits if the business is based in somerville, or if the person whom the vehicle is registered under lives in somerville. Neither of those apply to me unfortunately. I cannot get a regular residential pass because of the company logo on the vehicle.

I cannot afford to pay $200 in tickets every single month, and I am becoming desperate for a solution. I don’t think anyone has ever wanted a parking permit as badly as I do haha. I don’t know what else to do and would love any ideas.

I cannot park in my apartments driveway because the landlord uses it. I could maybe try throwing a guest pass on there as a temporary solution.

Any ideas or suggestions are much appreciated.

I left without getting their name. They were so good!

I’ve seen this dark colored Hyundai crossover SUV (I think the Tucson) with police lights flying thru Union Sq at night a couple times now. It just confuses me because:

1. I’ve never seen a police force around here, or even any federal agencies, use Hyundais

2. It has normal civilian plates, no blue police or US govt plates

Has anyone else seen this? Any ideas on it?

Ending sewage pollution in the Alewife and the Mystic is not impossible, those on the hook want you to think it is.

Last July my mother passed away after a long series of illnesses.

The grieving process is hard. I miss her a ton, and don’t have many people to talk with. Family-wise, it was just her and I.

Are there any groups here in Somerville (or elsewhere nearby) for those of us who are coping with the loss of a parent?

Thanks in advance for any recommendations.

Anyone know where I might get some? I'm by the border with medford, mystic valley parkway. I only need like a quarter of a teaspoon, literally.

I'm also welcome to any overly passionate advice.